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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956243">Power at all costs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_findlow/pseuds/m_findlow'>m_findlow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:20:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>32,775</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956243</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_findlow/pseuds/m_findlow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A promising project goes pear-shaped and it's up to Yvonne and Ianto to fix things before it's too late.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Britain is in the grip of one of its coldest winters in recent recorded history. According to the British Meteorological Bureau, the country is experiencing the coldest conditions in thirty years. With the latest on Britain's cold snap, we cross now to Rebecca Harris for more.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Steve. Yes, if you're feeling the chill this silly season, then you're not alone. It seems the North Pole has moved southward resulting in heavy snowfalls, thick fog and black ice conditions, causing road closures and major delays to cross-country and metropolitan rail services. To make matters worse, the country is also experiencing major power shortages, resulting in brownout conditions in many parts of England, Scotland and Wales.</p>
<p>The Prime Minister has spoken today at a press conference in Downing Street, urging citizens to be patient amidst the current energy crisis, whilst medical experts are advising that those most susceptible to the wintery conditions, children and the elderly, to stay indoors and dress warmly in the event that residential areas are hit by persistent power outages.</p>
<p>Some experts are saying the current shortage of power across the nation is a direct result of failed negotiations amongst North Sea oil providers as part of the new European Union pricing regulations. Others are suggesting that the lack of investment in alternative energy sources is going to compound the problem, resulting in increasing strains on current resources and many more months of uncertainty around commercial and residential energy supply.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, environmental scientists claim that this season's wintery conditions are yet further evidence of the impact growing carbon emissions are having on climate change.</p>
<p>On the streets however, the reduced power supplies don't seem to be hindering Britons as they continue to celebrate the silly season. One thing that doesn't seem to be in short supply, is Christmas spirit.</p>
<p>This has been Rebecca Harris, reporting for BBC One.”</p>
<p>“If only we could use some of that Christmas cheer to power up the country. Thank you Rebecca.</p>
<p>Now, if you've been wondering what the magic secret tip is to cooking the perfect Christmas turkey for tomorrow, wonder no more. Emmet Davies from the University of Edinburgh is about to shed light on some new research they've been conducting…”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gerry groaned inwardly as the balled up wad of paper hit him in the back of the head. He wanted to turn around and tell them to quit mucking about, but he knew that would only encourage them, sending more balls of paper flying in his general direction. Professionalism seemed to have gone out the window, somewhere along with Gerry’s sense of Christmas spirit.</p><p>What did he have to look forward to? Beans on toast with his father, since that was all he'd have stocked in his pantry, and more complaints as to why Gerry couldn't find himself a wife. Probably because he was having to spend half his life checking in on his miserly, widowed father who refused to leave the house, and greeted with the utmost disdain the online shopping delivery people Gerry sent round there. What prospective wife wanted a father in law like him?</p><p>‘Come on, old boy. Quit frigging about,’ Martin said. ‘We were meant to clock off at six. They're all waiting for us down at the pub. I can hear the pints calling me from here.’</p><p>‘Amazing the Ice Queen let us clock off at all,’ Vic replied, leaning tiredly against the edge of the counter. ‘That's bloody Torchwood for you, though. Shouldn't even have to work on Christmas Eve.’ He let out an annoyed sigh. ‘Get a wriggle on, Gerry! It'll be halfway to Easter soon.’</p><p>Gerry ignored Vic and Martin as he fussed with the controls on the panel. He just couldn't get a consistent reading from the containment field unit, and he wouldn't be happy until he could. The output kept fluctuating, which didn't seem right. The feed was constant and the mass inside should also be level, so why did it seem so out of whack?</p><p>‘Maybe it's the power,’ he quietly muttered to himself.</p><p>‘Worried about these brownouts, Gerry?’ Martin asked, tossing his white lab coat at him, having run out of paper to scrunch up into balls. ‘You'd think we didn't have backup generators.’</p><p>‘No one's going to be here for the next forty eight hours,’ Gerry insisted.</p><p>‘Afraid there's not going to be enough food for your little pets? Maybe they should come to the pub with us. That girl Tessa from procurement, she's got enough complex hydrocarbons stuffed into that tight v-neck top to keep them going!’ Vic gave an uproarious laugh at the comment.</p><p>Gerry blushed and pulled his asthma puffer from his coat pocket, giving it a heavy squeeze. Stress always made his asthma play up. He walked over to the output pipe, watching the slow trickle of black oil exit the chamber and pump its way to the storage silo at the other end of the oversized lab.</p><p>The silo itself ran five storeys down below their feet, and half a mile wide, right under the Thames. He followed the outflow pipe’s path, bending over to activate a panel on the side of the silo to check the capacity. Even at maximum projected flow, the silo had more than enough capacity to take them through until New Year. What he really wanted was a glowing report to be able to submit. There'd been so much pressure lately to perfect the process and make it economically scalable. In short, what that really meant was “we've already begun building, so it had better bloody work”.</p><p>He felt his chest tighten and took another drag on his puffer. Mixed in with fears about the project were thoughts of the buxom Tessa. She wasn't what Gerry would describe as marriage material, but he bet she'd be a damn good shag. That's what he really needed. A good shag would fix many things. But first he wanted to get to the bottom of this output variance.</p><p>‘We're leaving without you!’ Martin called out. ‘When you've finished frigging about, you know where to find us.’</p><p>Good, he felt like saying. They'd been sod all help so far in helping diagnose the issue. They didn't even think there was one. All they were worried about was clocking off and getting pissed.</p><p>He stood up straight and set his hands on his hips. When he looked down, he noticed a black spec on his otherwise immaculate white lab coat. He fingered it, feeling a greasy strain where his button had been. He frowned at it, knowing it was oil. He walked back along the length of the output pipe, running his hand along it in search of the leak. By the time he reached the end, he'd confirmed there were no holes in the pipe, but there were two more black marks on his coat - places where buttons were no longer there. Dread began to fill him as he processed the most logical conclusion in his mind.</p><p>‘Martin! Vic!’ he yelled out, but they were both long gone.</p><p>Gerry ran over to the control desk and began scrolling back through the power readings. Sure enough, he found the fluctuations. Small, but they were there, and getting slowly bigger as the containment field attempted to draw more power from an increasingly erratic flow.</p><p>Oh, God. Gerry’s heart rate kicked up a gear and with it, his inability to get enough oxygen to his lungs. He watched another dip in power register on the monitor. No, no, no, no….</p><p>He ran back through the doors that split the lab in two, headed for his laptop which he'd left behind. He had to set the override program to seal off the lab and get a lockdown in place. He practically ran into the bench which stood between him and his laptop, panting. He gripped his asthma puffer hard, shoving it deep into his mouth, pushing hard on it and suckling in deeply. In his panic there was hardly time to register the plastic device in turning to thick, black oil. It spilled over his hand and down his throat, the crude oil clogging his alveoli and blocking the flow of oxygen to his brain.<br/></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne settled back in the stylish white leather chair, turning it away from her desk to face the window. She admired the view of the black river snaking its way through the glittering city landscape below her. She scanned the vista with a keen eye.</p><p>‘It's Christmas Eve, and Torchwood is ready, Doctor,’ she announced, continuing her vigil. All across the city she had teams read to mobilise at the first trace of anything untoward. The Doctor would not slip through her fingers this time. This would be her Christmas present to herself.</p><p>In her hand she twirled the pen that had moments ago been signing off a further request to the Crown to release another hundred acres of land into Torchwood's care. If Project Aurora produced the results she expected, this would be just the first of many more acquisitions. Torchwood were going to need the space. And fast. To hell with those environmentalists in Kent who wanted to preserve a few rolling green hills.</p><p>She tapped the tip of the expensive pen thoughtfully against her chin and let out a surprised noise as the top half of the pen crumbled, scattering the hundreds of tiny Swarovski crystals encased inside it, now sparkling on the floor in a perfect imitation of the nighttime lights outside.</p><p>‘Blast,’ she cursed. ‘I really liked that pen.’ It had been a gift from the Duchess of Cornwall, who was a staunch supporter of Torchwood and a close personal friend.</p><p>She was about to go in search of the casing that had obviously somehow detached itself from the metal base of the pen when the lights overhead flickered for a brief moment, drawing her gaze upward rather than toward the floor.</p><p>‘Well, that shouldn't happen,’ she mused.</p><p>She stood up and walked over to the floor to ceiling glass wndows, hearing the light crunch of crystals under her stiletto heel. She peered out once again over the city, a sea of glittering lights in a field of black. ‘Are you out there, Doctor?’</p><p>The lights flickered again and she let out a groan, turning back to the desk. She reached for her mobile and dialed, listening to the ring divert to voicemail.</p><p>‘Raj, it's Yvonne. I expect you're probably already dealing with these power issues but can you call me back, please?’ She waited another ten minutes, expecting Raj would be on the phone any moment, updating her.</p><p>She caught the reflection of the lights flicker in her office again as she stared out through the window. With each tiny flicker she watched for a corresponding stutter of lights in the city surrounds, yet there was none. The rest of the city seemed to be unaffected.</p><p>She pressed the phone to her ear and dialed again, hearing the same message. She dropped the phone onto her desk and let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Honestly, do I have to do everything around here?’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lisa was going to kill him for not being there. That was his first thought as he pulled back the cuff of his jacket and saw the time on his digital watch. Or maybe not, he thought. She probably wouldn't even notice he wasn't there. Just because he'd struck up a bit of a friendship with her, and had been invited to eat lunch with her and her mates most days, did not mean that she considered him boyfriend material.</p><p>The invitation to come out after work for a few pints had probably only been extended to him because he'd been there at the time and it would have seemed impolite to exclude him from proceedings. Plus it was Christmas Eve and virtually the whole office had talked about nothing else all day. It made him feel better that everyone else seemed not to have a family to go home to either. There was safety in numbers.</p><p>He hadn't intended on staying out the whole night with them, but then this morning his flatmate had the same thought, and agreed that they could kill two birds with one stone. Soren had been nagging Ianto to introduce him to a few of his female work colleagues - Soren being a serial offender of short and unspectacular relationships. Ianto had reluctantly agreed, hoping that in doing so, he wasn't about to jeopardise his own chances with Lisa. Wouldn't that just be the irony of it all? Bring a mate who ends up dating the one person you wouldn't mind taking out on a date yourself.</p><p>He shook his head. He wasn't exactly doing himself any favours being still here. They might be at the pub right now, hitting it off. Perhaps he should have said something this morning, over cold toast and lukewarm tea, that there was one girl going to be there tonight that was off limits. Soren wouldn't begrudge him that. He was a good mate like that.</p><p>Just a few minutes more, he promised. He wanted this job done so that he wouldn't be sitting around thinking about it over the next two days. It wasn't like he wouldn't be back here soon enough. Torchwood didn't do the Christmas office closure like most businesses. Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and then it would be straight back to work - business as usual.</p><p>He didn't mind, though. Two days with his family back in Cardiff was quite long enough. Even then, he'd try and find an excuse to go back early. He didn't want to have to pay for an extra night at a motel, and bunking on his sister's sofa was more than he could stomach. And he definitely, definitely, didn't want his mum putting him up in the spare room, which ironically had been his old room. Staying with old friends was the lie he'd fed them. Which old friends he wouldn't say, since they didn't actually exist. There wasn't much of his old life back home that he missed - the company he'd kept for most of it least of all.</p><p>People in London were different somehow. They were friendly and always up for a party or going out to do something. Work hard, play harder. They came from all over, local Londoners, Northerners, Scousers, Scots, Italians, Indians, Irish, Australians. It was a real mixed bag of backgrounds which meant no one was ever considered the odd one out. That appealed to him. He might have missed that familiar Welsh lilt in the voices of the people on the street and at work, but it was something he could live with.</p><p>The screen flickered for a moment as he was scrolling down it, looking for a specific reference number. That was the third time tonight it had done that. He sighed. Probably these brownouts they kept warning people about. He was sure they were cutting off power only to the areas of London where people were least likely to complain - like where he lived. Their flat had been freezing for days now, never quite able to get the radiator to stay on long enough to bring the place up to a habitable temperature. He and Soren made do by wearing extra jumpers and socks, and making a habit of carrying their duvets around the flat with them.</p><p>The screen flickered more noticeably this time, before it went completely black. Bugger. That was all he needed. He'd been almost finished, too.</p><p>It took him a moment to realise that the lights overhead were still on. Around the small office space he could see the banks of other computers, each facing one another in the low partitioned cubicles, either turned off or lit with the familiar T logo rotating in a slow vertical spin on the screen. Only his computer seemed to be affected. Typical. That's the thanks you get for working back late, Jones, he chastised himself.</p><p>Perhaps the plug had come loose from the wall under the desk. That at least was a logical explanation as to why only his PC seemed to be affected. He got down on his hands and knees, trying to take a look at the dark space under his desk. It seemed to be plugged in okay, but he reached out and gripped it anyway, giving it a shove to make sure. As he pulled away, he felt something sticky on his hand. He studied it, finding a black smear. Corrosion of some kind perhaps? He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped off the worst of it. He decided he'd better clean it off his hand properly, making for the bathrooms down the hall and half a floor away. With a bit of soap, it came away easily, leaving a black soapy, slightly viscous mixture to disappear down the drain.</p><p>On his way back to his desk, he felt a pang of jealousy at the empty desks all around. It was the only time they'd been clean all year, their occupants having spent the better part of the day flitting about and not working at all, but rather conducting the traditional once a year clean of their desks. It was during this inspection that he noticed there were other random spots of black dotted around the place, just like the one that had been on his computer cable. It was strange, specs on pristine white keyboards, or pens left lying around, now stuck in the little piles of sludge. He tentatively held one up, finding half of it melted away in the black goo. That wasn't good. Whatever it was it was definitely toxic. He looked up, wondering if it was coming from overhead, dripping down, and spotting a few other random dots on the ceiling, but nothing that indicated a single source of the problem.</p><p>He picked up a phone and dialed for the general maintenance line, but there was no answer. There was a chance they were still in the building, however it seemed they were ignoring calls. He could hardly blame them. With nothing else to do since his computer was out of commission, he decided to go see them personally to report the problem. At least then he could get out of here with a clear conscience.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne's heels clicked loudly as she marched down the corridor. She was sure she hadn't told Raj he could take Christmas off. He didn't even celebrate Christmas as far as she could tell. She wasn't sure what the hell Hindus celebrated but she was pretty sure the birth of Christ wasn't one of them.</p><p>She'd already headed up to the lab at the very top of Torchwood Tower, where their latest project was busy being installed, but there'd been no one up there.</p><p>Annoyed, she pressed the button to the elevator, before deciding that with glitches in the power around the place perhaps that wasn't the wisest idea. Stuck in a lift over Christmas? No thanks.</p><p>She continued her march along the corridor, following it all the way to the fireproof stairwell at the end. She tugged open the heavy door, shoes continuing to click on each and every concrete step. The paint on the handrail was well worn, even though it was only a few years old. Too many evacuations of the building, Yvonne decided. Not that she joined them, of course. Mostly they were false alarms, overzealous employees who erred on the side of caution. Around here, that was probably a good thing. No, she only left her office if someone she trusted told her to. She wasn't about to go traipsing down thirty flights of stairs because there was an exploding alien corpse, or a prototype weapon making funny noises. They had containment protocols for a reason, after all.</p><p>Exiting the stairwell, down the hallway and finally coming through the frosted glass door that lead to her own office, she was caught off guard by the young man standing there waiting, presumably for her.</p><p>Yvonne gave him a questioning look. ‘Can I help you?’</p><p>He tugged nervously on the end of his cuff. ‘I hope so. I wanted to report a leak?’ He didn't sound very convinced by his own words.</p><p>Yvonne folded her arms and looked down her nose at him. ‘A leak?’</p><p>He shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘Well, I mean, I thinks it's a leak. Or something.’</p><p>She sighed in a tired manner. ‘We have a general maintenance team for that sort of thing.’ She cast a glance at the young man. He clearly hadn't been working here very long if he thought a leaking tap was her problem. ‘You do know who I am, don't you?’ God help him if he didn't.</p><p>‘Yes, ma'am. And yes, I know we have a general maintenance team, but none of them were here. I'm sure it's probably nothing, but…’</p><p>‘Well, bless you for being so conscientious as to bring it to my attention,’ she said, hoping she could quickly dismiss him. She'd managed a quick glance at the security pass dangling from his belt. The green strip at the bottom of it told her all she needed to know. Level seven clearance. As low as you could go. He was an underlying of the lowest stature. Must do something about letting people with that clearance level access the higher up floors, she mused.</p><p>The lights overhead flickered again, and Yvonne couldn't help but let out another little groan.</p><p>‘You don't suppose the leak has anything to do with the power issues, do you?’ Ianto asked.</p><p>A derogatory little laugh escaped her lips. ‘The whole country is being gripped by power shortages and you think a little bit of water is the problem?’</p><p>She watched his expression turn serious. ‘It's not water.’</p><p>‘What?’</p><p>He reached into his pocket and pulled out a balled up handkerchief, holding it out towards her. She cringed at the offering. ‘Lovely.’</p><p>‘It's kind of sticky, but greasy as well,’ Ianto explained, showing her the black smear. ‘And it smells… a bit like oil, I guess.’</p><p>Yvonne narrowed her eyes at it. No, that wasn't right at all. It just couldn't be. ‘Where did you say this leak was?’</p><p>‘Well, there's a few random spots around the floor I work on, and I've seen a couple on my way here, but definitely less than down there.’</p><p>Yvonne hid the uneasiness that was troubling her. Coincidence, that was all. Nothing at all to do with Project Aurora. She fixed him with a firm glare. ‘And you're sure you haven't seen anyone else on your way up here?’</p><p>‘When I couldn't find anyone from maintenance, I logged into the company's security system to check who was still registered as being in the building,’ he replied.</p><p>Huh, why didn't I think of that? she mused. ‘You're telling me there's not a single other person here apart from me?’</p><p>‘I thought there'd still be some researchers up on level thirty two. People say they never go home,’ Ianto added sheepishly. ‘But, they're all gone too.’</p><p>‘Indeed,’ she agreed. ‘Where the hell is everyone? This place never sleeps. For there to be absolutely no one here, well, that's just unheard of.’</p><p>‘It's Christmas Eve, ma'am.’</p><p>‘So it is,’ she said, reminding herself that everyone else had likely gone home to do all that trite festive nonsense: drinking and gift giving and carolling. God, but she hated carollers.</p><p>‘They're probably all out at the pub getting pissed,’ Ianto said, forgetting himself for a moment. Yvonne got the feeling he meant to add that was where he was headed, just as soon as he'd offloaded responsibility.</p><p>‘They bloody well better not be,’ she quipped. Just because they were off the clock didn't mean they weren't still on call. Within fifteen minutes she could have a team mobilised if need be. Unless of course they'd slaughtered ten pints whilst waiting for the Doctor to show up. That was all she needed. No, they knew better than that.</p><p>She gave him an up and down look, noting the poor attempt at dressing like he was paid far more than he actually was. A cheap suit bought from the high street, shoes reasonably acceptable and polished, buttons rather than cufflinks. ‘Right, well, come with me, then,’ she ordered.</p><p>Ianto gave her a confused look. ‘Ma'am?’</p><p>She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Please don't ever call me that. Makes me feel old and irrelevant. Ms Hartman, or Yvonne if you must.’</p><p>‘Where are we going?’</p><p>‘My office for a start,’ she said, slipping through the polished glass door and leaning over the equally glossy smokey glass desk to reach into her drawer. ‘There's something I need.’ She pulled a sleek gun from the desk drawer, expertly checking it and pulling back the slide with a practised click.</p><p>‘What's that for?’</p><p>‘I do believe we may be the last people left here, which means you're coming with me.’</p><p>‘I'm sure there must be someone…’ Ianto trailed off.</p><p>‘Well, if there is, all well and good, but for now, you're it. I'm sure it's nothing, of course, but better safe than sorry.’ She paused and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What did you say your name was?’</p><p>‘Ianto Jones.’</p><p>‘Welsh?’ She let out an amused little sound. ‘How very multicultural of us. Well, come on,’ she said, slipping the gun into the inner lining of her cream coloured suit jacket. ‘Show me where you found this leak. Usually well below my station, of course, but a leader must do what she must. We'll take the stairs. Where is your workstation?’</p><p>‘Level Three?’ Ianto replied. The power flickered once more, reminding her that the lifts were not an option.</p><p>Yvonne sighed inwardly, looking down at the sharp pointed tips of her four inch shoes. ‘The things one must endure for Queen and country.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Ianto hadn't been in awe of the woman who lead the organisation which employed him before, he was now.</p><p>‘Are you sure you wouldn't like you take your shoes off?’ he asked, imagining that after fifteen flights of stairs, it was a wonder she could still walk, and that at no point had she stumbled, sending them both careening down the remaining fifteen. Lisa always moaned about her feet after wearing heels all day. He'd suggested she switch them for flat shoes - it wasn't as if she needed them for height; she already towered over him. She and the other girls would just laugh at him and tell him that guys didn't understand. Clearly he didn't. There had to be a very good reason to subject yourself to that kind of pain and suffering.</p><p>‘Why would I do that?’ Yvonne asked. ‘There's absolutely no reason. These stairs are perfectly safe and built to regulation standards.’</p><p>Even Ianto wasn't so thick as to know she was covering. The little sigh she let slip when they finally reached the door to Level Three confirmed it.</p><p>‘Right, now show me where you found this leak,’ she commanded, pushing past him as she weaved between the cubicles, having no idea which was actually his, he was sure. ‘No, wait, that's just…’</p><p>He came to stand next to her, spotting what had made her stop mid-sentence. There was a pile of black goo on the desk - Tracey’s desk - and a sad little paper tag and drawstring remaining from what was once a teabag.</p><p>‘That's not a leak,’ Yvonne said, casting her eyes up towards the pristine roof, before lowering them back down to the mess on the desk, pointing at it. ‘What is that, or, was that?’</p><p>‘A KeepCup, ma'am.’</p><p>‘A what?’</p><p>‘They're plastic cups you put your tea and coffee in? All the rage these days.’</p><p>It was the one thing noticeably missing from Tracey’s desk, so that was the only logical conclusion. He smirked at his choice of words. In Tracey’s case, most of the rage was inflicted on her colleagues, whom she loudly proclaimed were single-handedly destroying the world every time they came in armed with their disposable coffee cups from the café downstairs. He didn't quite understand it himself. Wasn't she just encouraging the production of more plastic by buying it in the first place?</p><p>‘It's biodegradable plastic, Ianto!’ she snarled at him when he'd said that. ‘They break down.’</p><p>‘So does my paper cup,’ he'd replied, wishing he'd never said anything. She'd refused to talk to him after that. He didn't mind. Tracey was a miserable cow, anyway. Everybody said so.</p><p>Yvonne pulled a pen from the messy desk caddy and swirled it around in the black substance, extracting the teabag and holding it up for closer inspection.</p><p>‘What melts plastic but leaves a teabag intact?’ Ianto asked, dreading the answer. He couldn't help but think how pissed off Tracey would be when she found out her precious cup was no more. There was a twinge of glee at imagining telling her “it broke down”.</p><p>‘Bollocks,’ Yvonne muttered. Ianto didn't like the sound of that.</p><p>‘Ma'am?’</p><p>‘Yvonne! Please,’ she begged, annoyed with him and his formality.</p><p>‘Sorry.’ He stopped himself just before the “Ma'am” slipped out after it.</p><p>‘Give me your phone,’ she demanded, dropping the sticky pen back on the desk.</p><p>‘Why?’</p><p>‘Because mine is upstairs and because I asked you to.’</p><p>Ianto slowly extracted the phone from his pocket, keying the unlocking code and giving the screen a surreptitious little wipe on his trouser leg before handing it over. Yvonne quickly swiped it from his hand. He caught the brief flash of the T logo from the Torchwood app on his phone, before Yvonne was tapping away.</p><p>‘Ah ha, not alone after all,’ she said. ‘Right. Let's go.’</p><p>Ianto frowned. ‘Go where?’</p><p>Yvonne fixed him with a firm stare. ‘To fire someone.’</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne stormed out of the office and headed back towards the main corridor, Ianto towing uselessly after her. Gerry bloody Kruishner, she seethed. When she got her hands on him he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. Why tonight of all nights? she asked herself. She needed to be focused on other things, not plugging holes in other people's complete incompetence.</p><p>She pressed the button for the lift rather more forcefully than was required.</p><p>‘I thought you said the lifts-’ Ianto began.</p><p>‘Forget what I said. Where we're going stairs are not an option.’</p><p>The lift gave a gentle ping as the doors slid open with an almost silent reverence as if sensing who had summoned it. Yvonne stepped inside, swiping her access card and adding a secure pin number on the security panel. Ianto slipped hurriedly through before the doors closed with the same inaudible efficiency and began their descent.</p><p>Yvonne watched the young man as his eyes remained fixed on the numbers scrolling down on the blue illuminated panel. When the number hit B4 and continued to dip, she saw the look of surprise. ‘Yes, before you ask, there are more floors.’</p><p>Ianto turned to her. ‘When you said we weren't alone…’</p><p>Yvonne pulled his phone from her pocket and tossed it back it him. ‘You ran a search on active personnel. So did I. There is one other person still here, and he in all likelihood can explain what's going on.’</p><p>‘Who?’</p><p>‘Doctor Gerry Kruishner. A highly qualified petrochemical engineer.’ She caught the look of relief on his face. ‘What, don't tell me you thought there was an alien in the building? Good heavens.’ There were plenty of them, but she'd have had to run an entirely different search for that.</p><p>Ianto gave a nervous little swallow. ‘How come he didn't show up when I did my personnel search?’</p><p>A little eye roll accompanied the condescending tilt of her head in his direction. ‘Because Ianto, there are things going on at Torchwood that you don't have security clearance for.’</p><p>‘That's pretty much everything,’ he quipped, watching the floors on the panel continue to drop.</p><p>Yvonne gave him an amused look. ‘Quite. Gerry and his team are working on a very special project down in Sub-basement Nineteen.’</p><p>‘Nineteen? This building doesn't have a Sub-basement Nine- never mind,’ he trailed off. Clearly that was above his security clearance as well. ‘If I don't have clearance to know about that, then why are you telling me?’</p><p>‘Because you're here and you might yet prove useful.’ She wasn't sure how, but everyone had their uses.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto felt the nervous twitch of excitement as the elevator doors slid open. This was Torchwood. An organisation that dealt with aliens supposedly, and here he was, getting to see something that none of his fellow colleagues had ever seen. Sure, they'd speculated over many things in the cafeteria and at the pub after work. There were always rumours about the strange goings on at Torchwood.</p><p>The building was evacuated all the time and no one paid much mind when the alarms went off anymore. It was a good excuse to go out and get a coffee while they waited for the all clear to return to work. No one ever really bothered to put the rumours together with the alarms and consider themselves in danger. If they'd known they'd come within five minutes of accidentally setting off a bomb that would cause nuclear winter, or that a pair of weevils had gotten loose and killed four soldiers before a dozen bullets each had finally ended their existence, none of them would have ever shown up for work again. They never saw the frazzled scientists or the bodies that were occasionally whisked out through secret passages and in unmarked vans. Most of the time they never even saw the military arm of the organisation, except for the ones that ran the mandated monthly firearms training. Torchwood, both on the outside and the inside, to most looked like nothing more than just another corporation. Getting to see it for what it really was, intimidating as that might be, was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.</p><p>The first thing that struck him was how plain and ordinary the hallway looked. If he'd been expecting something super high tech, then he was sorely disappointed. This hall didn't look any different to any of the halls he walked along every day. Same white walls, same doors with the word Torchwood emblazoned all over them. You couldn't walk twenty feet anywhere in the building without being reminded which organisation you worked for.</p><p>Yvonne marched him past several identical looking doors before stopping in front of one, and swiping her card once more.</p><p>‘Gerry?’ she called out, stepping into the lab. ‘It's Yvonne Hartman. What the hell is going on down here?’</p><p>‘Um, ma'am?’ Ianto said, pointing across the room were he could see something poking out from behind the bottom of one of the lab counters. It looked like another blob of black. She nodded at him to go over and check it out.</p><p>As he stepped closer, he saw that the black shape was in fact a shoe, and once he was stood right over it, he saw what was attached to it.</p><p>‘Oh, God. It's a body,’ Ianto said, stumbling back and holding his sleeve up to his mouth, praying to God he didn't throw up. There was something about the way the head was positioned, the eyes bulging from their sockets in horror that left him certain they were dead.</p><p>‘It's Gerry,’ Yvonne said, coming over to see for herself. Ianto stepped back, his face ashen, trying to swallow down the bile that wanted to force its way up his esophagus.</p><p>Yvonne glanced at him dispassionately. ‘First dead body, I take it?’ He nodded, not trusting to open his mouth and say yes. ‘Get some gloves.’</p><p>He swallowed again, grateful to be able to do anything other than continuing to stare at the corpse. He looked around the lab, before spotting a cardboard box of disposable gloves sitting on one of the benches. He tugged out a pair and held them out for Yvonne who was now knelt next to the body.</p><p>‘Not me. You,’ she said. She caught his reticence and sighed. ‘Fine. Get me a pair as well.’ He returned with a second pair and she snapped them on with practised efficiency. ‘Now, let's take a closer look. Ianto, hold his head up for me. And for God's sake don't throw up.’</p><p>Ianto swallowed hard again, before coming to kneel at the top of the body. From this angle it didn't look so bad, until he placed his hands on either side of Gerry’s head. He could feel through the thin membrane of the gloves that it was still warm. He tried positioning the head straight but it was stuck. ‘It won't move.’</p><p>‘Push a little harder,’ Yvonne said. ‘It's only rigor mortis. Dead between one and two hours if he's stiff.’</p><p>Slightly horrified, Ianto did as instructed, feeling it eventually give in to the force he exerted. It felt ten kinds of wrong. Dead body, oh God, he kept repeating in his head.</p><p>He watched as Yvonne studied the corpse, peeling back the eyelids with a gloved thumb, reaching for a hand and checking his fingernails, before moving to the obvious black stain seeping from Gerry‘s mouth, down his cheek and onto the floor.</p><p>‘Asphyxiation if I'm not mistaken,’ she reported. ‘But how? Look at his right hand. The palm is covered in black.’</p><p>‘Maybe he was coughing into his hand.’ It didn't seem very hygienic for someone who worked in a lab.</p><p>‘Maybe,’ she slowly replied.</p><p>Ianto fingered the edge of the lab coat. ‘He's spattered in that same black substance. Look at his coat.’</p><p>Yvonne frowned and looked closer. ‘Not spattered,’ she replied. ‘It's precise. See here?’ She pointed to the edges of the coat, little black marks at equal intervals, and a larger spot over the breast where his security pass would have been clipped to the edge of the pocket. ‘Plastic buttons. Plastic security pass.’</p><p>‘But how did it get into his mouth?’</p><p>Ianto was looking around the room, anything to avoid looking at the body any longer. He wanted to go, to hand this over to someone more qualified to deal with it. They should be calling the police, or an ambulance, or someone.</p><p>Something caught his eye under the workbench next to Gerry’s body. He let go of Gerry's head and crawled toward it, leaning down to reach for it lodged in the narrow gap. His hand gripped something short and tubular. It too was covered in a coating of greasy black.</p><p>‘What's that’? Yvonne asked.</p><p>‘Canister… of some kind,’ he said, inspecting it. It was small and easily fit in his palm. He wiped down the side of it with a gloved thumb, seeing writing on the side. ‘Ventolin,’ he read aloud. ‘That's for asthma. Like something you'd put inside one of those plastic puffer devices.’</p><p>‘Ah, now that is interesting,’ Yvonne mused. ‘Black hand, black substance in his mouth and throat… Like he was using it at the time, just before it disintegrated.’</p><p>‘But disintegrated into what?’ Ianto insisted, rubbing his fingers together, now covered in the viscous goo. ‘If I didn't know better, I'd say it was-’</p><p>Yvonne looked up at him, cutting him off. ‘Oil. Crude oil.’</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne stood up, her senses on edge at the disturbing discovery. Her eyes immediately drifted beyond the lab's inner doors, to the large transparent cell and outflow pipe that lay beyond them. She tugged off her gloves, leaving them in a sodden pile on top of Gerry’s body. ‘With me,’ she commanded, expecting her underling to follow without question.</p><p>She watched Ianto continued to stand there, slowly stripping off his own gloves. ‘Should we go in there?’</p><p>Yvonne gave him her best questioning look. Did he really think he had a say in the matter? He cast his eyes to the floor and trailed after her.</p><p>She strode over to the far wall, peering at an indicator panel. There were a dozen readings scrolling across its surface.</p><p>‘Do you know what you're looking at?’ Ianto asked.</p><p>Yvonne was growing tired of questions. Perhaps she should have cut the young man loose earlier and just dealt with this herself. ‘If you're asking me, am I a scientist, and will my MBA be sufficient qualification to ascertain precisely what this means, then no. Do you?’</p><p>Ianto said nothing, deciding that was the wisest course of action.</p><p>The lights in the lab dimmed for a few seconds before coming back up to full power. Yvonne saw the readings change on the panel, up and down, then back up again.</p><p>Ianto persisted with his questions, much to her annoyance. ‘What does this have to do with what happened to Doctor Kruishner?’</p><p>‘This has everything to do with what happened to him,’ she replied. ‘Only there's no way it should have gotten out.’</p><p>‘No way what should have gotten out?’</p><p>‘Unless the power…’ Yvonne let the thought drift.</p><p>Ianto stepped across her path. ‘Look, I know this is probably all way above my security clearance, but can you please tell me what's going on?’</p><p>Yvonne sighed. ‘This lab has one purpose and one purpose only. Complex matter conversion.’</p><p>‘So… plastic…’ She watched as the cogs in that tiny mind went to work, puzzling over what was plainly obvious. ‘But, it would be a controlled process, right?’</p><p>‘Of course. It appears we may have a leak.’</p><p>‘If it's a leak then everything made of plastic in here should have been consumed.’ He looked around the room as if needing to confirm his own suspicions. ‘But it's not.’</p><p>‘Exactly. Why not? We need to check Doctor Kruishner’s files to see if he knew anything.’</p><p>Yvonne returned to the main lab, pulling the laptop closer to her. She was still convinced perhaps this had been one freak accident. Besides, there simply weren't enough particles to worry about. Enough for what they needed, though more would have been better.</p><p>She spent ten minutes poring over the files before she slapped the laptop down in frustration. ‘There's nothing here to indicate anyone was aware of any changes to standard operations.’ Idiots, she added in her mind. They'd been so close to a viable commencement date and now their lead engineer was dead.</p><p>She brushed a hand through her hair and then set it on her hip. ‘Fine. It's fine. We'll just go back upstairs, call in the research team and let them deal with it. An isolated incident. Unfortunate, of course. Now we all just have to move on.’</p><p>She exited the lab, knowing she'd spend the rest of this evening on the phone, demanding answers. Doctor Kruishner’s colleagues could forget their eggnog and gift giving. They'd be here within the hour to get Project Aurora back on track or so help her God.</p><p>She stopped just short of the shining glass door at the end of the hall which lead to the lift. She turned to look at Ianto. ‘Thank you for your assistance this evening, Mr Jones. Your services are no longer required. Have a nice Christmas.’ <br/>She tugged on the door, but it didn't open. She scanned her card again and pulled the stainless steel handle once more. ‘It's locked,’ she said, peering through the frosted letter T at the hallway beyond. ‘Why on Earth is it locked?’</p><p>Ianto pulled out his phone and opened up the Torchwood app. ‘Ms Hartman? It says we're in lockdown.’</p><p>She snorted. ‘Don't be ridiculous. I think I'd know if we were in lockdown. There's warnings and alarms. There's more bells and whistles than a bloody royal wedding.’</p><p>He showed her the display on his phone, confirming the situation. ‘Right. Well,’ she began, letting go of the door handle and smoothing down her skirt. ‘That's unfortunate.’</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto glanced down at the phone's screen again. This was possibly the first time it had told him something useful about the organisation he worked for, albeit it didn't tell him how to get himself out. One would have thought it could be a little bit more informative. Were there specific protocols to be followed during a lockdown? Who knew? His phone certainly didn't have the answer.</p><p>Yvonne peered through the glass door again, as if yearning for that elusive world beyond. ‘Why do you suppose we weren't alerted?’ she said, turning back to him, voicing her thoughts as he caught her watching him study the screen.</p><p>‘Something melted through my computer cable earlier,’ he replied. ‘Maybe it melted some other cabling as well? Like internal alarms?’</p><p>‘Marvelous,’ she murmured.</p><p>‘You can override it though, can't you?’</p><p>Yvonne gave him her most condescending smile. ‘Ianto, darling. Do you know what the purpose of a lockdown is?’</p><p>‘To stop stuff getting out.’</p><p>‘Very good. And if I was able to override the lockdown, what would happen?’</p><p>‘Stuff would get out,’ he said, feeling stupid.</p><p>‘Precisely. Now, that's not to say I can perhaps tweak the lockdown protocols, but first we need to know what we're dealing with. Doctor Kruishner may have instigated it before his death.’ She clicked her fingers and pointed back to the lab. ‘I want that laptop.’</p><p>She strode back down the hall and into the lab. Ianto watched as she perched on one of the stools in the lab, propping the laptop on the edge of the bench. ‘Luckily for us, this wasn't damaged,’ she murmured, entering access code after access code. The speed with which her hands flew across the keyboard made Ianto feel giddy. Every pass code she entered was about twenty keystrokes in length. Even he was impressed that she could remember them all.</p><p>He had no trouble remembering things, his photographic memory recalling things with absolute clarity, but most people had a hard enough time remembering one password. Most of his co-workers chose obvious things like dates of birth or names of pets, despite the clearly set out policies about password strength. Admittedly, he cheated slightly on that front as well, but at least he used Welsh words.</p><p>As he waited, the reality of the situation finally dawned on him. They were locked in. They were locked in for God only knew how long. Bloody hell it was Christmas Eve and he was locked in at work! He pulled his phone out and dialed.</p><p>‘What do you think you're doing?’ Yvonne asked, not even looking up from the laptop.</p><p>He paused for a second. ‘Calling my mum.’</p><p>‘Is she a petrochemical engineer?’</p><p>He pulled the phone away from his ear. ‘No.’</p><p>‘Then don't bother. Besides, I think you'll find your call isn't connecting.’</p><p>He held it close again. The only voice on the other end was the flirty computer voice of his telco operator telling him his call couldn't be connected and to please try again later. ‘How did you know?’ he asked.</p><p>‘All part of Torchwood's default lockdown protocols. The system isn't sure what the threat is, so it covers all bases. That means no outbound communications of any kind.’</p><p>‘We can't call for help?’ Ianto asked. ‘At all?’</p><p>Yvonne rolled her eyes at him. ‘We're in lockdown.’</p><p>‘But that doesn't mean us, does it?’ There had to be a way out for the people that got inadvertently caught up in such things. Lockdowns were for dealing with unabombers and alien threats. It didn't mean locking in innocent people, like them.</p><p>‘Ianto, I know you're new to all of this but stop and use that brain of yours for a moment. Imagine for a second that there's a threat inside Torchwood. Now imagine that this hypothetical threat also has someone on the outside, ready to be a dead man switch. By instigating a lockdown, we prevent the insider from making contact whilst we deal with them.’</p><p>‘But Torchwood staff…’</p><p>‘You think there's no chance someone who works here couldn't become compromised? We deal with the alien and the unknown. Everyone is deemed a risk.’</p><p>Ianto paused to let the idea sink in. It did make sense when you thought about it like that. He didn't give much thought to what went on outside the realm of his own little department. It was easy to forget that other people had bigger problems than spreadsheet formulas that didn't work. ‘What about Torchwood Three in Cardiff? Won't they be alerted to the problem? Couldn't they do something?’</p><p>Yvonne barked out a laugh. ‘Torchwood Three? You must be joking. An amateur rabble at best. No, I don't want that smarmy Captain Jack Harkness anywhere near this.’</p><p>‘But I thought…’</p><p>‘Whatever you think is irrelevant. Torchwood is mine to be run how I like. For the good of the Empire,’ she added. ‘Cardiff are a nuisance branch with only one purpose, to monitor the rift and remit anything of use back to London for analysis.’ She gave a tired sigh, evidence of a long suffering relationship with their Welsh counterparts. ‘Not that I think Jack ever gives us anything useful,’ she muttered. ‘I'm positive he's keeping things from us. The man has been a thorn in our side from day one. Arrogant, stubborn, and a hindrance to progress. If it wasn't such a dangerous and thankless task I'd have got rid of him. Another problem for another time, however,’ she said, attempting to change the subject.</p><p>Ianto leant a hand against the edge of the bench, trying to refocus his efforts not on what they couldn't change, but on what they could. ‘So, did Doctor Kruishner instigate the lockdown?’</p><p>Yvonne frowned at the screen. ‘No. But it's currently isolated to this floor and the ones beneath it.’</p><p>‘That's good, right?’</p><p>‘In normal circumstances, yes. There'd be people within Torchwood Tower on levels not in lockdown who would be on hand to deal with the situation. Unfortunately, tonight it's just you me.’ She cast a brief look at the floor behind her. ‘And dead Gerry.’</p><p>‘And for the next three days it's just us,’ Ianto finished, remembering that the office would be closed and that no one would be coming back until after the holidays. He paused and considered everything that had happened which had lead him to this point. ‘If the lockdown has us isolated in here, though, and upstairs we saw evidence of, er, oil, doesn't that mean that whatever this is has already spread beyond the lockdown area?’</p><p>Yvonne gave him an appraising look. ‘You're not as stupid as I thought after all.’</p><p>‘Gee, thanks.’</p><p>‘The systems should, and I repeat, should, expand the lockdown area if contamination reaches a critical point.’</p><p>The lights in the lab went out completely, plunging them into darkness. Ianto had thought it was bad enough being trapped down here. Being stuck in the pitch black was even worse.</p><p>The darkness stretched on for what felt like an eternity, but was only actually ten seconds, before the lights blinked back on. Yvonne turned to the laptop, pressing keys but the screen remained blank.</p><p>‘Blast. That last power surge has fried the circuit board. Damn these power shortages.’ She cast an annoyed gaze around the room, scrutinising the light fixtures overhead. ‘We shouldn't even be affected. How's your phone battery?’</p><p>Ianto consulted the screen. ‘Sixty seven percent.’</p><p>‘Good. We might need it.’</p><p>‘As a torch, perhaps,’ he quipped.</p><p>She slid off the stool and headed back towards the door with a distinct air of purpose, pulling it open and looking left then right, before stepping through.</p><p>Ianto stayed where he was. There might have been a dead body keeping them company inside the lab but at least it seemed whatever danger had resulted in the horrific death had at least passed. The lab felt safer than what potentially lay beyond it. ‘Where are you going?’ he called out.</p><p>Yvonne paused, one hand still on the door frame. ‘I think you mean where are we going?’</p><p>‘I thought you said we were in lockdown.’</p><p>‘We are. But we can still move around the lockdown area.’</p><p>‘How does that help?’ he asked, already disliking the sound of her proposal.</p><p>‘We need to find the source of the leak.’</p><p>‘But, after what happened to Doctor Kruishner…’</p><p>She fixed him with a stern look, not unlike that of the headmistress from his school days; the one that suggested he hadn't done anything wrong other than be appallingly stupid. ‘And are you planning on sticking something plastic in your mouth and choking yourself to death?’</p><p>‘No, but-’</p><p>‘Then what have you got to worry about? We're not sitting here twiddling our thumbs for three days. Come on.’</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne lead them further down the corridor, past numerous doors. All of them had the same nondescript signage - a letter, followed by two numbers and another three letters - that gave nothing away about what went on inside. The numbering system appeared to be in no way sequential. The lab they'd been in had been designated A2-5KLY. The one immediately next door was S5-9OFE.</p><p>She stopped in front of one of them, seemingly at random until Ianto noticed two differences. Unlike the others which had clear glass doors, this one was solid white and looked rather more formidable. The sign to the right of the door was also unlike the rest. It simply read GX65.</p><p>Yvonne deftly keyed a pin into the security panel and pulled it open. It was small on the inside, just a storage unit, Ianto realised, but from floor to roof, every spare inch of its walls were covered in brackets and shelves containing guns and munitions.</p><p>‘Lovely,’ Yvonne beamed, quickly selecting a large handgun, removing it from its secure bracket, and holding it out to Ianto. She reached back for a clip and passed him that as well, raising an eyebrow when he just stood there dumbly holding one in each hand.</p><p>‘What do I need a gun for?’</p><p>‘I would have thought that's obvious,’ she replied, taking it back off him and expertly sliding in the clip before pulling back on the safety. ‘You've had standard weapons training, haven't you?’</p><p>He kept his eyes fixed on the gun in her hand. It wasn't dissimilar to the one his training officer made him use. Lightweight, minimum recoil, perfect for civilians. What he meant was, idiot proof. ‘Well, yes, but…’</p><p>‘So, if something plans on attacking us, you use that. Simple enough I should have thought.’</p><p>‘Two seconds ago you said we had nothing to worry about.’</p><p>‘And if I'm wrong, which I rarely am, won't you be glad that you've got a gun? I'd rather not go down there and be the only one with a weapon if it comes down to it.’</p><p>He reluctantly took the proffered weapon, making sure the safety was on, just as his instructor had drilled into him at the end of every session, so that he didn't accidentally shoot himself. He hoped he'd have the good sense to remember that if he needed to use it. ‘Who the hell keeps weapons in a research lab?’</p><p>‘This is Torchwood. We plan for every eventuality.’</p><p>‘Okay… so, where are we going?’</p><p>Yvonne pulled her own gun from her jacket. Ianto couldn't help but admire the way the expensive looking, clearly custom made, pearl hand grip matched nicely with her suit. ‘You and I are headed for the silo.’</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne forced open a door at the far end of the corridor. Unlike the rest of the floor, this passage wasn't brightly lit, and there wasn't a panel of glass or shiny stainless steel to be seen. It was just one long, dark concrete tunnel. Ianto thought he could smell the damp seeping through the old concrete walls, expecting them to drop water on him at any moment, or for rats to go scurrying by past his feet. The lights overhead activated only as they approached, and shut off as soon as they were past, leaving him in a no man's land of darkness either side of them.</p><p>There was a shudder and a rumble which stopped him dead in his tracks. ‘What was that?’</p><p>Yvonne gave a nonchalant shrug as she kept walking. ‘Just the Underground. Although, I suppose I should call it the Aboveground. It's fifty feet above us at least.’</p><p>Ianto cast his gaze upwards toward the grimy light fixtures, rattling ever so slightly in the aftershocks of the train passing by. He tried to picture it, but unable to imagine just how far down they must actually be. The passage stretched on and on, but still Yvonne kept going, unafraid of what lay in the blackness beyond.</p><p>‘Where are we exactly? I mean, underground, obviously…’ he asked, jogging to catch up with her purposeful strides. ‘Is this still Torchwood?’ It felt more like some secret World War Two bunker that had since been rediscovered.</p><p>‘Of course it's Torchwood. We're under the Thames.’</p><p>‘But… we can't be.’</p><p>‘Of course we can. Who do you think funded the Canary Wharf redevelopment, hmm? Everything from Limehouse to Greenwich is ours. Has been for over a hundred years. We were here before the London Underground, before the Great War, watched the British Empire in India fail, protected the city through the Blitz and stopped the collapse of the modern world from Y2K. The city grew up around us, not the other way around. People see that nice, big shiny building and think that's us, but oh,’ she gave him a smile, her eyes sparkling, ‘there's so much more than that. And this is just the beginning.’</p><p>‘It's all underground?’</p><p>‘Yes, dear boy. Away from prying eyes. The world wasn't ready to know about Torchwood, but the twenty-first century is when everything will change.’</p><p>She slipped her gun from her jacket as she approached the wide double doors finally lit at the end of the corridor. She gave him the eye, a signal he took to mean he should ready his own weapon. It had sat uncomfortably against his chest in a jacket pocket that was ill-suited to carrying anything bulkier than a wallet. It felt little more suited to his hand, the metal grip cold despite the warmth of his hand. This was definitely not a training exercise.</p><p>‘Ready?’ Yvonne asked, her security pass paused over the scanner.</p><p>He nodded, unsure what other option there was. The panel beeped an affirmative sound and Yvonne slipped inside with a speed that caught him by surprise, dutifully following after her.</p><p>Her gun held high, she scanned the room, using it as her point of reference as she swept it slowly left to right.</p><p>‘I think we're clear,’ she reported. The language was militaristic and somehow suited her, Ianto thought, though she was clearly not military herself. It was cool and authoritative, and strangely reassuring. He hoped his relief didn't show too much. It hardly mattered though, as the expression was quickly replaced by one of absolute awe at the sight of the room’s interior.</p><p>The walls appeared to be made of brushed steel, glinting in the fluorescent light and reflecting that light all around the room. On one wall were banks of computerised panels, glowing with their own series of coloured lights and displays, but otherwise, the room was seemingly empty.</p><p>‘Magnificent, isn't it?’ Yvonne asked.</p><p>‘Why are all the walls made of steel?’ He touched one with a finger, and was surprised to find it slightly warm. ‘Is it to insulate against interference?’</p><p>‘They're not walls, Ianto. Those are the sides of the silos. We're at the very heart of Project Aurora.’</p><p>He'd never heard of Project Aurora, but then again, he hadn't heard of much at all. He'd always considered himself quite perceptive, able to piece together even the smallest fragments of information to form a picture. In a place where he got most of his information from the rumour mill, it definitely came in handy. Like that time he was the one who had to explain why Nigel had been fired.</p><p>Hasim had been in Julie's office, when he heard the phone call through the wall in Adam's office, asking if Accounts knew anything about why his department wasn't getting any additional allowance for Friday night drinks. Harvey, who was delivering inter-office mail, heard it from Susan who also worked in accounts, that Derek found anomalies in their accounting. He'd flipped it to his mate Angus in IT, who was at the time dating Parminder who just happened to be an old flatmate of Rebecca, who always took a late lunch and often ended up in the queue with Ianto, debating whether that pasta bake was now well past it and should they have the sandwiches instead, and did he know a guy on Level Three called Steve because her boss wanted a meeting with him about some misappropriated funds and she couldn't find his email address in the system (too many Steve's and she didn't have his surname). In the end he felt a bit bad about inadvertently getting Nigel fired, but then he wasn't the one hacking accounts and stealing money.</p><p>Now however, he felt like a mushroom that had been kept in the dark. Misappropriated funds was nothing compared to this.</p><p>‘But what is it?’ he asked.</p><p>Yvonne stepped over to one of the huge silos, caressing it with her hand, like it was a lover. ‘We are going to revolutionise the world's energy crisis.’</p><p>Ianto tried to follow as best he could with the limited facts he'd accumulated so far. ‘You found oil under the Thames?’</p><p>Yvonne chuckled with such condescension that Ianto knew he had it all wrong, reminded again that he really didn't know anything at all. ‘We found something better,’ she replied. ‘Presidium 320. An alien, but completely manufactured element. Invisible to the naked eye, so small that only the most powerful nanoscopes can even begin to visualize it. It converts polymers and complex hydrocarbons into simple hydrocarbons, converting plastics and rubber into crude oil. And the best part? It takes only a small amount of the element to convert tons of material. Of course, once we figure out how to make more of it, that will certainly speed things up, but the potential is limitless. Countries will be able to give their waste to us to be converted into oil.’</p><p>‘So, this is recycling? Trade your plastic waste for oil?’</p><p>‘Don't be silly. Nations will pay us to take their waste. The finished product will then be sold to the highest bidder. We're already in the process of constructing more than a dozen sites where rubbish will be collected and processed. The British economy won't see a penny of the funds, but it will keep Torchwood running for the next millennia based on budgeted projections.’</p><p>‘But I thought the point was to reduce reliance on burning fossil fuels?’ He couldn't imagine any country would be mad enough pay to have their plastics melted down into oil and then pay again to buy it back.</p><p>‘That's where you're wrong. These aren't fossil fuels anymore. Fossil fuels take tens of millions of years to create. We're no longer relying on a finite supply. Fifty years is the projected limit of current reserves. Despite what companies like British Petroleum would like to have us believe, the world's reserves are not inexhaustible. The simple fact is, they are. It took sixty five million years to form the world's reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. We've mined eighty percent of it in the last two hundred years. Not to mention the fact that the majority of those reserves are located in politically unstable areas of the world. That or they're out under the oceans where it costs trillions of dollars just to extract it. Just look at the debacle caused by the Deepwater Horizon incident. We simply cannot have a world where base resources are being held to ransom by terrorists, extremists or the poor mismanagement of corporations. Presidium 320 will realign the balance of power in the world.’</p><p>Ianto traced a finger idly across the metallic surface of the silo wall, trying to picture what lay on the other side. ‘Won't more oil just mean more waste?’</p><p>‘Waste that will be converted into fresh fuel. There's no limit to how much we can create. This is recycling on a scale unheard of anywhere. No more global oil spills in the oceans, no more cutting down ancient forests to make way for coal mining, no more risks from failing nuclear power plants or finding somewhere to store spent nuclear rods that won't break down for millions of years. What's greener than that?’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto didn't want to mention the obvious side effects of burning oil: the carbon emissions, global warming, rising sea levels, and continued freak weather conditions, just like the winter they were experiencing now. For all their technological advances, half the world still lived in below poverty conditions. He couldn't see how this was going to bring prosperity to them. The rich get richer and the poor keep getting poorer. It wasn't going to change the world; it was just going to reinforce the divide between the haves and the have nots.</p><p>‘It doesn't look very green to me,’ Ianto said instead, stepping closer to the computer banks along the far wall, pointing at the thick black goo that was slowly oozing from that panels in places that had once held buttons and gauges, seeping down towards the floor in little dribbles of black.</p><p>Yvonne stepped closer and frowned at the sight. ‘These containers are solid titanium. Nothing should be able to get out of them.’</p><p>‘I don't think it's getting out,’ Ianto said. ‘I think whatever it is you've got converting plastics into oil is doing this. Where are you keeping this Presidium substance? Is that what was in Dr Kruishner’s lab upstairs?’</p><p>Yvonne gave a dismissive little wave of her hand. ‘The lab upstairs is just a control sample monitoring the overall process. The floor above us contains the main conversion unit.’</p><p>‘And what happens up there?’</p><p>‘There's a continual feed of plastics material being fed into the unit. The Presidium element reacts with the molecular structure and breaks it down. From there, it transfers into these silo units for storage.</p><p>‘Well, then I think you have more than a little leak. Just how much of this Presidium stuff do you have?’</p><p>‘The sample is limited. We've been trying to understand where it came from and how to create more of it with limited success. You see, it's devilishly tricky to work with. Given what it obviously does, means strict containment. At an atomic level it's so small that even our most highly advanced materials can't contain it.’</p><p>‘So how do you contain it?’</p><p>Yvonne gave him a pleased look, like she was about to reveal something she personally had discovered. ‘Electricity,’ she said. ‘An electromagnetic field so powerful that ordinary Earth technology becomes completely useless within range of the field. Everything in the silo here is shielded by four inches of radium-coated steel, otherwise it would never work. Take a look at your phone.’</p><p>Ianto pulled it from his pocket once more, noticing that there was no reception. The battery bar at the top was thoroughly confused as to whether it was fully charged or on its last ounce of power, and the screen flickered and faded. ‘If I lose my contacts list,’ he warned. He stopped and forgot the end of the sentence as he watched the screen flicker again, just as the lights had done earlier. ‘Do you suppose these power cuts we've had…’</p><p>Yvonne heaved out a sigh. ‘Congratulations, you've finally caught up. Yes, it would appear that for all our good planning and precautions the diversion of power across the city has affected our ability to maintain the field. But it's fine. The sample is small and the leak even smaller. We're locked down. It can't get out.’</p><p>Ianto's face scrunched up in concern. ‘But hasn't it already?’</p><p>‘It was likely concentrated when it escaped and crossed paths with Dr Kruishner. Those few particles however should quickly disburse.’ She gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘What's a few melted pens and coffee cups? By the time it eventually leaves Torchwood Tower there won't be enough mass in those few particles to convert a tiddlywink. Once this power crisis is over we can ramp up the containment field again, widen it to cover the entire lockdown area and then slowly narrow it down and round up any loose Presidium.’</p><p>She sounded so confident as she said it that it made him feel almost as if everything would be fine, despite the fact that they were still stuck down here for who only knew how long. If the power crisis didn't resolve itself quickly, what then? Could they be in here for days, or even weeks? Perhaps he was overreacting. Surely once people knew what was happening, they'd be able to make some arrangement to divert more power and get them out. Yvonne could no doubt pull those sorts of strings. He was probably worrying over nothing. A day or two down here might not be so bad. At least it'd get him out of having to go home for Christmas and suffer through his mum and sister passing judgment on his lifestyle. He was sure they meant well, but he always left feeling browbeaten, like his whole life had become one big disappointment to them. He was twenty-three, single, with a good job and the whole world ahead of him. His sister had been married at twenty, his nephew David arriving shortly thereafter. His niece was three now, and Rhiannon considered her brother well behind the eight ball. He should, in her opinion, at least have a steady girlfriend by now.</p><p>‘No, that's not right,’ Yvonne murmured, mostly to herself. Ianto watched as her expression went from one of confusion to one of disbelief. A foreboding sensation began to build in his own stomach.</p><p>She tapped a few keys on the console, making vexed sounds as they came back sticky and black. Ianto offered her his handkerchief, still wedged in his pocket though already stained with oil.</p><p>‘Thank you,’ she said, wiping them off. Ianto was surprised that she sounded genuinely grateful at the gesture.</p><p>‘Is something wrong?’</p><p>‘The conversion output numbers look wrong.’ Ianto quirked an eyebrow at her. She returned it with a glare. ‘Look, just because I'm in charge around here doesn't mean I don't know what's what. I've read every report stemming from Project Aurora and signed off on them personally. You might have had paper pushing leaders in the past but this is my organisation and I know how every tiny cog in it works.’</p><p>Ianto kept his silence. Now was probably not the time to mention that she hadn't even known who he was or what he did. He was obviously a very tiny cog indeed.</p><p>She scrolled through a series of charts, a little scowl marring her slightly masculine features. ‘The tanks are filling at an unprecedented rate.’</p><p>‘That's good, though. Right?’</p><p>‘Scientists have measured the rate at which Presidium reacts with polymers and how much matter they can convert given a set amount of time and feedstock. There's simply no way they could possibly be converting at this rate with the amount of Presidium molecules we have.’</p><p>‘Isn't that the opposite to having a leak? Wouldn't there be less?’</p><p>‘Exactly. So how can there be more, unless…’ Her eyes lit up momentarily. ‘Unless they discovered a way to make more Presidium.’ She reviewed the readings again. ‘If anything it's multiplying, even as we speak. Why didn't Gerry say anything?’</p><p>‘Isn't that a bad thing?’</p><p>Yvonne looked at him with such a perfect expression of surprise that he wondered for a moment if she wasn't completely mad. ‘Why on Earth would you think that? We've been trying for months to understand how to replicate this element.’</p><p>Ianto stepped forward. ‘You say you have a leak. If the scientists really did find out a way to make more, then your leak is going to get bigger and bigger, and it's going to want more material to convert.’</p><p>She chewed on this thought for a moment, biting her lower lip as she contemplated the idea. ‘You're right. That does present us with a slight problem in our current situation.’</p><p>‘Are we screwed?’</p><p>‘Not yet.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They abandoned the silo, Yvonne's quick and clipped strides back down the dark corridor under the Thames imbuing in Ianto a sense of urgency. If Ianto's desk mate Tony had been here, he would have said “shit’s about to get real, Ianto.” It was his favourite saying, and applied to almost any situation he found himself in, whether it was an impending deadline for a report, one of Tracey's temper tantrums, or the final five minutes of a West Ham football match.</p><p>Yvonne explained very calmly that everything was effectively controlled from Lab A2, and that all they needed to do was to switch off the systems that fed the plastic input. ‘It's obviously what's causing the reproduction of Presidium,’ she continued on. ‘We must have reached some sort of critical mass whereby we triggered the replication.’</p><p>Science had never been Ianto's strong suit, but Yvonne's explanation left him somewhat baffled. If it was a molecule, made up of atoms that supposedly didn't exist on Earth, then how could a chemical reaction create more? You couldn't just create something out of nothing. That was alchemy - lead into gold, water into wine - nice in theory but practically impossible.</p><p>‘Keep up,’ she commanded, the string of overhead lights stretching further as she broke away from him, moving faster. He wasn't sure if she meant that in the physical sense or the metaphorical one.</p><p>The sudden bombardment of light as they re-entered the main building made him squint before his eyes adjusted. His efforts were hampered by the flickering of the lights which was now constant and irritating. The quicker they got this resolved, the better, he thought. He still held on to the hope that they would get out of here tonight; that tomorrow morning his sister would pick him up from the station in her beaten up hatchback, foisting on him lukewarm pancakes wrapped in foil, before his mum piled even more food onto his plate at lunch, insisting he didn't eat enough.</p><p>He was still thinking about food when he entered the lab. It was such a distracting thought that he bungled into the back of Yvonne, expecting her to keep moving and not stop dead. When he saw what she was looking at he wished he'd used a better metaphor, and all thoughts of roast turkey and plum pudding fled his mind.</p><p>‘Oh my… God…’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper. A few feet away was a massive pile of black sludge, slowly oozing away in all directions.</p><p>The words tumbled out of Ianto's mouth before he could stop them. ‘Wasn't that a body before?’ All evidence of Dr Kruishner’s corpse was gone. There wasn't so much as a bone left. ‘Oh, God.’</p><p>Yvonne shook her head, disbelieving. ‘It can't do that. It just can't.’</p><p>When Ianto looked around the lab, he saw another smaller pile of black, right where he'd left the box of latex disposable gloves, and another where Yvonne had dumped the defunct laptop. Everything else around the lab had been neatly packed away.</p><p>Yvonne rushed towards the doors that split the lab in two, sealing off the aft section where the control sample containment unit and outflow pipe were located. The doors hissed shut and she took a few steps back, keeping her gaze fixed on the room beyond.</p><p>‘It's alien right?’ Ianto asked.</p><p>‘It's just chemical,’ she insisted.</p><p>‘If it converts everything now, how are we still here?’</p><p>‘That's a very good question.’ She moved across to the side of the lab, pulling across a glass panel on a retractable metal stand. It lit up as soon as she touched the side of it. Ianto came over, the question already on his lips.</p><p>‘Series One quantum computer tablet. It's a direct video feed from one of our nanoscopes,’ Yvonne explained, ‘right inside the control sample containment unit. Gerry took great pains to show it to me as if watching blobs on a screen was somehow even remotely interesting.’ Ianto could see why it didn't spark the imagination; the technology might be cool but the visual on screen was just a load of grey dots.</p><p>‘Does it magnify any more than that?’</p><p>Yvonne fiddled with the visual menu overlays, selecting one that increased the magnification. Tiny grey dots became complex chains of dots within dots. A small legend on the side of the screen identified oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms, floating in amongst the dominant view of the atomic structures identified by the computer as Presidium 320. Right at the bottom of the legend however was a label “Unknown” marking out small yellow dots that drifted in and out, sometimes on their own, but eventually forming little clusters.</p><p>Ianto leaned closer. ‘What is that? Those yellow things moving in between the atoms.’</p><p>They watched as a complex hydrocarbon chain drifted into the path of one of the clusters. It was set upon, like being consumed by a school of ravenous piranhas, disintegrating in a heartbeat, leaving behind a trail of smaller molecules, marked Carbon and Nitrogen by the computer legend.</p><p>‘My God, did you see that?’ she said, watching again as the tiny yellow particles moved towards another plastic molecule, smothering it and turning it into oil. ‘They behaved like a, like a…’</p><p>‘A swarm,’ Ianto finished.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto gazed in horror at the screen. ‘It's not the Presidium that's converting material. It's something alien hidden inside the Presidium.’</p><p>‘The human body is made up of millions of carbon and hydrogen atoms in every manner of complex structure imaginable,’ Yvonne reflected.</p><p>‘So, it's moving from eating complex atomic structures to anything containing the constituent parts?’</p><p>‘Looks that way.’</p><p>‘Meaning humans are now an equally good source of food.’</p><p>‘That does appear to be the case,’ Yvonne replied. ‘It looks like they've decided to upgrade their food source.’</p><p>Ianto pursed his lips and took in a deep breath, realising only now that his breathing had become shallower and panicked. ‘Okay. Trapped inside with an alien swarm. One that's invisible and has acquired a taste for flesh. What do we do?’</p><p>She gave him a stern look that sent chills down his spine. ‘We keep our heads, that's what we do. Give me your phone.’</p><p>‘Again?’</p><p>‘Just give it. I just thought of something.’ She practically snatched it from his hand like an errant child who'd decided his toy looked like more fun. ‘If I can just… yes.’ She held the phone up and began scanning the room.</p><p>‘What are you doing?’</p><p>‘Torchwood app. Beta version. You've just been upgraded. Research and Development have been working on augmenting our usual alien scanning parameters to take in additional considerations - changes in ambient temperature, radiation, disturbances to electromagnetic fields - because any clever alien is not going to just be walking around the streets in disguise. Well, only the stupid ones. Now… let's see what we can find.’ She made a slow arc, holding the camera lens at head height, panning around and back again. She let out an irritated sigh. ‘Nothing. It must have moved on from the lab.’</p><p>‘But they're microscopic,’ Ianto countered. ‘Won't that make it impossible to see them, even with that?’</p><p>‘I'm not looking for the particles, I'm looking for what's not there; disturbances in the air that might indicate their presence. If we really are dealing with a swarm, then they should cluster together.’</p><p>‘An alien swarm,’ Ianto breathed. He could barely believe what he'd just said. It seemed too improbable, even for Torchwood.</p><p>Yvonne appeared thoughtful. ‘Why now, though? How did the scientists working on this project not see this before? I mean, if we can see it… Unless it needed time to reach some sort of critical mass.’</p><p>‘Or maybe the alien particles inside the Presidium were in some kind of hibernation, and feeding them woke them up, causing them to multiply.’</p><p>‘You're getting better at this,’ Yvonne said, giving him a momentary smile of amusement. She stepped away from the screen. ‘All speculation, I suppose. It hardly matters now. Our job is to stop it from doing, well… whatever it is it plans on doing.’</p><p>‘I thought you said we were going to shut down the system that's feeding plastics into the conversion unit? Try to slow down the process.’</p><p>‘I did.’ She stepped back over to the glass touchscreen, bringing up a couple of windows that flickered intermittently, just like the lights. She furrowed her brow at the screen, watching it protest at her commands. ‘It's no good,’ she reported, casting a baleful glance at the room beyond. ‘Either the power surges have corrupted the hardware or…’</p><p>‘Or the swarm has eaten critical components,’ Ianto finished for her.</p><p>She strode towards the lab doors, holding up Ianto's phone for a brief moment, before releasing the doors and charging though, headed for a large red button mounted on the wall. She thrust the heel of her palm into it, activating a total shut-down override.</p><p>The gentle hum didn't stop. Ianto watched the output monitors, expecting every graph and statistic to drop suddenly to zero, but they kept going. Yvonne pressed the override again, but it failed to do more than make a little thunk sound as she hit it.</p><p>‘If we can't control the rate at which feedstock is going into the system…’ Yvonne began.</p><p>Ianto set his hands on his hips, staring around the room. ‘I get the feeling it's not worried about how much you're feeding it anymore,’ he replied. ‘It's gone after other sources of food already. Unless of course you think you can lure it back by putting on a decent spread.’ She gave him a withering look for his attempt at being smart.</p><p>She tossed his phone back at him, making him clutch for it awkwardly in the unexpected exchange. Ianto watched she withdrew her gun again, walking towards the glass door of the lab that lead back out into the main corridor, peering through the glass with an air of expectation.</p><p>‘Right,’ she said, coming back over. ‘What we need is a plan. That means finding out where it is and what it wants. It's not down in the silo, obviously. If it were, we'd have been attacked by now, but we haven't. It isn't here, either, and it's not leaking from the control room. That means it can only be coming from the main conversion room.’ She said it with such a calmness that he could barely believe they were contemplating their own miraculous survival so far, and that they could ask it what it wanted, as if it weren't already plainly obvious, and that it was up for negotiation.</p><p>‘It must be heading upwards,’ she declared.</p><p>‘So, that means we should go down?’ Ianto asked, an air of hopefulness in his voice.</p><p>‘Hardly. If it's going up, then that's where we're going as well.’</p><p>‘That's your plan?’ It was impossible to mask the incredulity in his voice. He'd agreed to some stupid things in his life, but this took the cake.</p><p>‘If the swarm manage to breach the lockdown area, then the automatic safety protocols will enact, expanding the area of Torchwood Tower that's covered by the lockdown. That means more of the building will be accessible to us as well. If we can just make it up to the higher levels, maybe we can do something to override the lockdown.’</p><p>‘But you said-’</p><p>She snapped around at him, gun clutched tightly, her face contorted in annoyance. ‘Forget what I said. I have absolute authority here, Ianto. If anyone can deactivate some of the protocols and get a message out to bring in support teams, it's me. It's not guaranteed, but it's worth a try. Now, are you with me?’</p><p>‘Seems I've not got much choice,’ he replied, lacking any conviction.</p><p>‘Now,’ she began, ignoring his lack of enthusiasm, ‘the stairwell is out. That will have been completely locked off, but the lift should still be operational at least as far as the lockdown extends. We use the lift to gain access to the upper levels. The more of the building that goes into lockdown, the higher we can go, and not risk running into the swarm. We'll be completely contained.’</p><p>When she put it like that, it didn't sound like such a bad plan. Stay in the lift. Wait until they could get to where they needed to be. Where was the risk in that?</p><p>‘Now, you'll just need to go out there into that corridor first and check that the coast is clear,’ Yvonne instructed. She began pushing him towards the lab door.</p><p>Ianto struggled feebly against her insistent hands on his back. ‘Me? Why me?’</p><p>She let go and fixed him with a firm stare. ‘Are you disobeying a direct order from your superior?’</p><p>Ianto sighed. He should have read his employment contract more carefully. There must have been something in there about danger pay. This surely must have qualified.</p><p>‘Keep your gun and phone at the ready,’ Yvonne ordered, already ushering him towards the now open door before he had a chance to disagree with her. In the end she practically shoved him out into the hallway.</p><p>He heard the lab door click shut behind him, leaving him stranded and alone in the corridor. He turned back to face Yvonne, only to see her waving him away. He turned away from her and stared at the wall opposite. ‘Right. No problem. Just fifty metres of winding corridors, spooky fluctuating lighting and an alien swarm that could strip flesh from your bones like a mob of angry piranhas.’ Checking himself, gripped his gun in his right hand, keeping it low beside his body and praying he didn't shoot his own foot off. In his left hand, he slowly raised his phone, letting the familiar interface frame the view in front of him as he stepped tentatively forward.</p><p>When he reached the first junction of passageways, he held the phone out and around the corner, checking before stepping out. So far, so good, though he didn't know what he was looking for exactly. He practically skipped along its empty length, hurrying to the next corner. The flickering lights were playing havoc with his vision, sending him into darkness and light randomly and often, making the screen of his phone alternately dim then blinding.</p><p>He was almost at the lift, able to see it at the end of the corridor as he made the final left-hand turn, before swiveling around to go back and tell Yvonne. Only as he spun around did he notice the green haze appear on the screen of his phone.</p><p>When he averted his gaze, he could just barely make out the way the air shimmered, like something was disturbing it. He froze, paralysed by the realisation that the swarm was right there in front of him. His mind flashed to the images of Dr Kruishner, a mutilated pile of oil. That was what was going to happen to him. There wouldn't even be enough left for anyone to identify the body. He assessed his options, or lack thereof. The lift was still a good forty feet away. Would he have enough time to make a run for it, or would the swarm cut him down first?</p><p>In his head all he could hear was the blood rushing past his ears, thumping in time to the beat of his heart. The phone shook in his hand and his gun arm remained fixed at his side, too stunned to move it. The green cloud on the small screen gathered itself and began to move toward him. He wasn't brave enough to run. He couldn't even manage to scream.</p><p>The gunshot startled him, missing his head by inches as bullets flew past, creating a frisson in the air that whipped past his ear. He twisted his head sideways to see Yvonne standing there with her gun aloft, having let loose two rounds into the heart of the swarm. Ianto backed away down the hall, stumbling over himself as he tried to hold up the phone and get a picture of whether they had disbursed. Instead the angry green haze continued towards him as he pressed back against the wall with nowhere to go.</p><p>‘No?’ Yvonne said, stepping forward. ‘That didn't work. How about this?’ She lifted her left hand and shot again. This time the particles flew out in all directions, hurtling away from them. Ianto turned to look at Yvonne, noticing for the first time the second gun held in her left hand. She held it up in a slightly smug way. ‘Oh, this? High powered stun gun. Uses an electrical charge. I thought perhaps if electricity contained them inside the unit, then perhaps a shot of the same thing might keep them at bay.’</p><p>‘But…’ Ianto stammered, trying hard to keep up.</p><p>Yvonne rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘You didn't really think I left you out here on your own, did you? I just needed a decoy whilst I went back to the weapons store. A risk worth taking, wouldn't you agree?’</p><p>He wasn't sure whether to feel grateful or used. His mum would have clipped him around the ears and said “you thank that woman right now, my boy”, whereas his sister would more likely have turned around and said “she did what? Bloody cow!”.</p><p>Yvonne pulled a second stun gun from the small of her back, hidden under her finely tailored jacket and handed it to him. ‘Now, come with me. We don't know if that was the entire swarm or just a fragment of it. Best not hang around and wait for it to reform.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne pressed the button in the lift for level thirty and swiped her access card. The security panel flashed red. She made a vexed little sound from between gritted teeth. Still locked.</p><p>‘You didn't really expect that to work, did you?’</p><p>She prayed that the look she gave Ianto conveyed just how much she despised the snippy little remark. Of course she knew it wouldn't work, but neither did she ever dismiss out of hand the simplest or most obvious course of action. There was a place for sheer dumb luck. ‘I save your life and the best you can offer is smart arse commentary?’</p><p>‘I prefer to think of it as dry witted humour. So, we're still limited by the lockdown. Isn't that a good thing?’</p><p>‘Insofar as it means the threat is still limited to this immediate area, then yes. Allowing us access to anywhere where we might be able to do something to stop the swarm, not so much.’</p><p>She groaned, pressing the button again in frustration, even though she knew it wouldn't achieve anything. Of all the nights for Raj and his team to decide to have the night off. Not to mention that the Doctor might yet still turn up. Curse the lot of them. Here she was, the leader of Torchwood, stuck with the lowly office boy trying to fix this mess and no idea what might be going on outside. The Doctor could be parading about outside her front doors right now and there was nothing she could do. Nothing!</p><p>She jammed her thumb against the button again, pressing it insistently. ‘Why couldn't I have gotten stuck here with somebody else? Anybody!’</p><p>‘It is Christmas,’ Ianto reminded her.</p><p>She stopped, feeling slightly embarrassed that she said that last thought out loud, before her embarrassment gave way to frustration. ‘So? You're still here.’</p><p>‘Not by choice.’</p><p>‘I pay you enough, don't I?’</p><p>‘It's not about the money.’</p><p>She snorted. ‘Of course it is. You millennials are all the same. Loyalty is bought these days, and everyone has a price tag. Everyone.’</p><p>‘If you believed that, maybe you'd have spent more on your people and less on the image you project out to the world.’</p><p>Yvonne felt glued to the spot. She turned to stare at this cheap-suited upstart. Where did he get off speaking to her like that? To her! Five minutes ago he'd been like a deer in the headlights before she'd come along and stopped him from being the swarm’s next meal. ‘Did you just… diss me?’ Even the word sounded wrong when she said it.</p><p>He held his hands up in deference. ‘I'm just saying. They call it human resources, like we're just things and not people anymore. Resources are things you use up until they're exhausted, or cast aside when you no longer have a use for them.’</p><p>She forced herself not to roll her eyes at his naiveté. The world needed less of these young, tree-hugging, moral high ground, idealists and more gritty, hard-working, go-getters. In short, they needed more people like her. ‘That's the way the world works now, Ianto. Get used to it.’</p><p>She began pressing buttons for floors one by one, starting from the top and working her way down. Finally her swipe card flashed green against the panel. ‘Level Ten? That's as high as we can go?’ She let out another groan. ‘Fine. For now it looks like that's where we're headed.’</p><p>‘That's rather high up, you know. Considering how far down we are,’ Ianto observed.</p><p>‘The lockdown is progressing quicker than I expected,’ she confessed. Not that it mattered. Torchwood Tower would hold strong. The alien swarm would never escape the building, that much she knew for sure. Internal lockdown was one thing, but the external systems were impenetrable. They would contain this thing, and put a stop to it. ‘We're fine,’ she assured him.</p><p>‘You said the containment unit draws a lot of power.’</p><p>‘The protocols are overcompensating, that's all.’</p><p>‘If you say so.’</p><p>‘I do,’ she replied, ending the argument.</p><p>The lift slowly began its ascent. Yvonne kept a close watch on the numbers as they scrolled by in almost a blur. She supposed they should be bloody lucky that the lift car was within the lockdown zone, and able to be summoned at all. There was that sheer dumb luck. The lights inside the lift flickered once, then twice, before it juddered violently to a halt, sending them both to the floor in a heap. The lights went out, plunging them into a thick darkness, and then there was nothing but silence.</p><p>‘Are you alright?’ she asked, trying to scramble awkwardly to her feet which seemed to be tangled up with Ianto’s own. A flash of light shot straight into her eye and she turned away from its painful brightness, grunting her displeasure.</p><p>‘Sorry,’ she heard Ianto mutter, twisting his hand away so that the flashlight from his phone camera wasn't pointed right at her face.</p><p>‘Turn that off,’ she commanded.</p><p>‘But-’</p><p>‘It's a waste of battery. We might yet need that. Not like we don't know where we are.’ She could sense his reluctance, switching off the flash and plunging them back into the dark. Trapped in a five by seven box with no power. Well, perhaps not being able to see her useless companion was something of a concession. She could almost imagine he wasn't there. Until he spoke at least.</p><p>‘What happened?’</p><p>‘Another drop in power, I suspect,’ she replied. She paused and held her breath, waiting for it to come back on, hearing Ianto scrabbling around in the dark until he bumped into her, apologising once more. ‘Nothing,’ she declared. She felt her way along the side wall until her fingers brushed the raised buttons on the panel. She pressed blindly at them, hoping it was just the lights that were out of action, but there was no response to any of her requests for the lift move. ‘It's no good. Either we've lost power from the brownouts, or more likely, they've chewed through the insulation on the electrical systems that power the lift.’</p><p>‘They can't chew through the support cables, can they?’ Ianto asked, his voice trembling slightly with fear at the prospect.</p><p>‘High tensile strength steel? I doubt it.’ They weren't about to suddenly drop two hundred feet to their deaths if that was what he was worried about. They just weren't going anywhere, and that was unacceptable.</p><p>She kicked off her shoes and they made a loud clunk on the floor. She felt Ianto jump at the sudden sound and force out a panicked ‘what was that?’</p><p>‘Relax, it's just my shoes. We're not dying,’ she said, laying the sarcasm on thickly. ‘Now,’ she grabbed for him in the dark, positioning him. ‘Give me a leg up,’ she said, placing her hands on his shoulders and waiting a moment, trying to place a stockinged foot somewhere she thought his hands might be. Now would have been a terrible time to get her positioning wrong and shove her foot somewhere sensitive. She didn't wait for him to ask yet another question. ‘We're not staying here waiting around like a can of sardines.’</p><p>Her foot found the clasped hands and she pressed herself up, hearing the “oof” escape his lips from the effort. Don't you dare make a comment about my weight, she thought.</p><p>‘Higher,’ she demanded, tracing her fingertips along the ceiling, looking for the access point and pushing at it forcefully, feeling it click out of place until she could press it higher and out into the lift well above them.</p><p>‘Give me a boost,’ and she felt her feet go higher, wobbling now that she had nothing to hold onto except the edge of the access point. She was surprised by the relative ease with which he hefted her up through the narrow hole, just enough that she could get her elbows out, using them as leverage and pushing herself the rest of the way.</p><p>‘I'm out,’ she called down.</p><p>She waited for Ianto to follow her. The lift juddered once, then again. She gripped the thick steel cable. ‘What are you doing?’</p><p>‘Jumping,’ Ianto replied. ‘How else am I supposed to reach up there?’</p><p>‘Well, can you jump a little less enthusiastically? And hand me up my shoes while you're at it.’</p><p>Whether he meant to throw them as forcefully as he did, she couldn't tell. The first one flew past her head, hitting the wall before settling, and the second one she caught by accident before it hit her in the face.</p><p>Eventually she saw his hands gripped the edge of the opening. She grabbed one and helped tug him out as he struggled the rest of the way under his own steam. ‘You're heavier than you look,’ she compinaned, rubbing her wrist where he'd wrapped his hand around it, using her to pull himself up.</p><p>‘Not as easy as they make it look in the movies,’ he said, ignoring the insult. ‘What now?’</p><p>She could barely make out Ianto's outline as they knelt on top of the lift roof. It was so dark inside the shaft. Even the emergency lighting was barely making an impact, its soft red glow emanating from small fixtures dotted at each doorway, rising up into the nothingness. More than a few floors up and they disappeared altogether, consumed by the darkness. Whoever had designed these things hadn't really thought through just how much light was needed, and if they hadn't contemplated someone trying to climb out and escape, then why bother with lighting at all?</p><p>‘Well, we can't stay here all night,’ she said. ‘There's no knowing if the power for the lift system will come back online.’ She let out an annoyed breath, casting her glance back upwards again. ‘We're going to have to climb our way out.’</p><p>‘Climb?’</p><p>She pointed to a spot on the wall, where a thin maintenance ladder was built into an alcove in the concrete wall, just to the right of where the doors would sit.</p><p>‘We couldn't just force open the first door we come to and get out?’</p><p>‘Would you prefer killer alien swarm or highly unlikely fall to certain death?’</p><p>‘Can I phone a friend?’</p><p>‘Move.’ Honestly, where had all the manly men in the world gone, she wondered - the ones that had despised her for trying to break the glass ceiling. When was the last time she'd had a proper fight on her hands? Probably Jack Harkness, she realised. He might be a pain in the arse, but at least he had the balls to go head to head with her, unlike the rest of those simpering yes men.</p><p>‘Would now be a good time to mention I don't like heights?’ Ianto asked.</p><p>‘It's dark. Just pretend you can't see the potential drop underneath you.’ She pointed across at the ladder, indicating for him to go first.</p><p>‘You don't want me to stay behind you and catch you if you slip?’ he asked.</p><p>She very much doubted acts of chivalry were his primary concern. ‘No, I want you to be the one to try and wedge open the door when we get there.’</p><p>‘Oh.’ She could almost picture him rolling his eyes at his own misfortune.</p><p>‘Well, get on then,’ she commanded, already reaching down to slip her shoes back on.</p><p>‘I wouldn't do that if I were you.’</p><p>‘Do what?’</p><p>‘Shoes,’ came the plaintive reply.</p><p>‘You want me to go around barefoot?’ The idea seemed simply ghastly. What kind of leader went around with no shoes on?</p><p>‘With all due respect, ma'am, I've had girlfriends who've sprained an ankle walking home for the pub in heels lower than those.’</p><p>Her exhalation was audible, a mixture of frustration and having to admit he was probably right. ‘Fine. And don't call me ma'am.’</p><p>She felt Ianto brush by her in the pallid light, tentatively reaching for the first rung and hefting himself up it. The ladder was narrow, barely a foot wide and Yvonne could hear the way his hands and feet went awkwardly one over the other as he climbed. After he was a safe distance up, she gripped the rung herself and breathed out long and slow. Queen and country, Yvonne, she told herself.</p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne began the slow climb, keeping an eye on the shadow above her, making sure he wasn't about to slip and send them both tumbling. Jolly bad luck that would have been. She paused when the sound above her stopped, noticing that Ianto had stopped climbing and was just standing there clinging to the ladder.</p><p>‘I think this is Level Ten,’ he reported, hovering next to a set of doors, peering at the faint lettering in the semi-dark.</p><p>‘Keep going,’ she said, pulling herself up another rung.</p><p>‘But-’</p><p>One more “but” and she was going to reach up and physically strangle him. ‘The lockdown protocols stopped the lift from going any higher than the lockdown area. But that's just the motor controls. With nothing powering the lift and the door mechanics, we should in theory be able to go further up.’</p><p>‘How much further up?’</p><p>‘All the way. Level thirty, force open the doors and get back in.’ She didn't have a plan as yet for what they'd do, but she was sure once she was back in her office, with her own phone and computer, there'd be some way of wresting back control of the situation. She would get a message out to her teams, even if she had to pin it to Ianto's cheaply-suited chest and throw him off the top of the building.</p><p>‘Wouldn't it just be easier to stop just outside the lockdown and use the stairs from there?’ She could tell from the tone of his voice that he wasn't enjoying this one bit.</p><p>‘They're at the other end of the building. Do you really want to be out in the halls with a man-eating alien swarm when the lockdown expands and it comes up looking for its next course? It can't find us in here.’</p><p>‘Good point,’ he replied, the sound of his shoes hitting metal rung after metal rung in acquiescence, continuing their path upward.</p><p>Yvonne put one stockinged foot in front of the other, trying to keep pace.</p><p>‘Where did it come from? This alien thing?’ he asked, his voice reverberating in the narrow concrete cavern. It sounded much deeper as it echoed down towards her.</p><p>‘We found it aboard an alien vessel that crashed in Suffolk, locked in a containment box. The box was made of an unusual material we couldn't identify but which was capable of maintaining its own very strong electrical field. It took weeks to finally crack the field and get a glimpse of what was inside.’</p><p>‘I'm guessing that should have been your first warning sign?’ Ianto remarked. ‘A locked box?’  </p><p>She stopped, gripping the ladder hard and casting a baleful glance upwards at him. ‘You want to lecture me?’ she lashed out. ‘Progress isn't made by sitting idle and never taking chances. Our success is a product of hard work and determination.’<br/>There was a slight pause and the sound of shoes on the ladder began again. ‘Perhaps if we weren't so consumed with building big fancy steel and glass buildings to show off that success,’ Ianto muttered, continuing to climb.</p><p>‘Don't deny you don't enjoy working here. Torchwood Tower is the envy of London. We are at the absolute height of modern technology and architecture because we've earned it. Sure, they might not know exactly what it is we do, but we serve a purpose. The greatest purpose. To bring this country back to the top of the food chain.’ Yvonne stopped to brush her hair away from her face before moving again. ‘Those Americans have grown fat and lazy, and we've let them with our complacency. Not anymore. Our destiny is in our own hands and we have but to grasp it. Britain will be great again.’</p><p>She caught the little snort of derision. ‘You make it sound so shiny and glossy.’</p><p>‘You have no idea, Ianto. You think it's all perfect. Believe me, I wish it were, but it isn't. Lives have been lost. People have been lost. They gave themselves for this organisation. Nothing in history has ever been gained without risk or sacrifice. That's what makes us what we are. We are prepared to do whatever it takes.’</p><p>That seemed to shut him and his disapproving opinions up, Yvonne thought, listening only to the sounds his worn shoes made on the metal rungs of the ladder, and the occasional puff of exertion from the climb.</p><p>Torchwood had been a rabble before she'd been appointed. It was nothing more than a disparate cluster of people doing their own thing, in their own way, focused only on the project in front of them. There was no control or oversight, no single purpose, no leadership to pull everyone together so that they were all rowing in the same direction. Of course, she knew it still wasn't perfect. UNIT had yet to learn to mind their own business, and Torchwood Three still needed to be reined in. Torchwood Two was a non-event and Archie was well past being anything other than a caretaker of nothing important. She was quite content to let him idle away whatever years he had left in dementia-riddled ignorance. And as for Torchwood Four… well, that hadn't happened on her watch. An unfortunate matter that may or may not resolve itself.</p><p>Yvonne stopped her movements, taking a moment to peer at the numbering stenciled onto the inner wall near one of the outer lift doors and frowning. What idiot had thought it was a good idea to mark the floors in black paint on a dull grey concrete wall? In the emergency lighting, it was almost impossible to discern. She had a good mind to find out which company had been responsible for installing this lift system and ensuring someone there was duly demoted. Or better yet, fired.</p><p>‘Keep going up a bit further,’ she instructed, leaning back slightly to convey her voice upwards. ‘We're still about ten floors away.’</p><p>She watched him climb higher, finally pausing beside the two metal doors above her for a moment’s rest. She didn't dare look down to see how far they'd come. The burn in her legs and her upper arms was enough to prove that falling now would be very bad and very deadly.</p><p>There was a thunk sound, like someone had dropped a brick from a great height. The emergency lights flickered momentarily before resuming their red glow.</p><p>‘What was that?’ Ianto asked.</p><p>‘Nothing,’ she said, brushing off the feeling of unease. ‘Just keep climbing.’ Then next to her, she heard something even more disturbing. She turned her head to see the cabling in the core of the lift well begin to hiss as it moved, glinting in the muted light. Seconds later she caught sight of a heavy counterweight sliding down the far wall, descending into the ruddy darkness. ‘Oh, no,’ she muttered.</p><p>‘Please tell me that's not what I think it is,’ the voice above her said.</p><p>It would stop well before it reached them, she was sure. The lockdown couldn't have reached this height yet. All the same, she thought. Couldn't have resumed normal operations twenty minutes ago whilst they'd still been inside it, could it?</p><p>‘Now what?’ he called down to her when he didn't get a response.</p><p>‘We get out of here before we get crushed by an ascending lift.’</p><p>‘The doors are shut,’ he reported.</p><p>‘Of course they're shut, otherwise people would just walk right through them! Just reach across and try pulling them open.’ Wasn't that obvious?</p><p>‘Oh yes, because I'm sure that won't take any effort at all!’ he quipped back.</p><p>‘Look for some kind of internal release lever. There must be something up there. If the power is out, then any internal locks that usually keep the doors shut should also be out of action.’</p><p>She watched as Ianto risked taking a hand off the ladder where he'd been clinging for dear life, scrabbling around in the semi darkness trying to find anything at all that looked like a release lever or button. ‘I never bothered to look up on Wikipedia how to get myself out of a broken lift,’ he said, still fumbling around before coming back to grip the railing before he lost his balance. ‘Can you come up higher?’</p><p>‘Why?’</p><p>‘Because if I have to reach out and prise the door open, I'm going to need both hands, and I can't do that. If you climbed up behind me and held the ladder around my waist… God, I can't believe I just said that.’</p><p>Yvonne could see the logic, though it still sounded slightly mad. If he slipped, they'd both be dead, assuming they weren't squashed first. Yvonne groaned. ‘I don't like it, but you're probably right. Hang on.’</p><p>She clambered rung over rung until she was just below his feet. ‘Don't move,’ she ordered, reaching up to grab the ladder either side of his legs, forcing her way further up until she was stood just one rung below his own feet, her arms wrapped around his hips. ‘Well, this is cosy,’ she quipped, hugging his body to the ladder.</p><p>There was a nervous little laugh, borne of panic. ‘Do I need to file a sexual harassment report?’ he asked, to which she scoffed a brief, mirth-filled sound.</p><p>‘My interest in you is solely based on your ability to get us out of here. Now hurry up!’ She couldn't see the lift yet, but she could feel the slight change in air pressure as the rising lift created an upward draft, sending with it the greasy smell of lubricant.</p><p>She pressed her head against the small of his back, partly to give him leverage, but more so she could see what he was doing.</p><p>He let go of the ladder with one hand, stretching it out to reach what looked like a small piston at the base of the door, tugging at it. Daring to let go with the other hand he stretched across, fingertips brushing the edges where the two doors met and trying to get a grip on it.</p><p>Yvonne clutched tighter to him, hearing the ominous thunder of the cables pulling the lift higher. ‘Have you got it?’</p><p>‘Al… most,’ he said, both hands now working at the edge, trying to pull it back. There was a groan and a squeal as the metal scraped slowly open.</p><p>‘Yes!’ Yvonne cried.</p><p>Ianto gripped the door edge, pulling it back. A sudden squeal from the elevator car coming up the cable made him lose his grip for a split second, just long enough for the door to begin springing back shut. As he reached across to grab it again, his weight shifted too far left. Yvonne cried out as the body beneath her slipped from out of her grip from above, forcing her left hand to lose its grip on the railing as Ianto's body fell sideways.</p><p>There was a scream as Ianto swung wildly out into the lift well, but somehow he managed to grip the lower edge of the doorway before he plummeted. His legs swung out beneath him into the nothingness as the door jamb tried to squeeze shut around his fingers. Yvonne stretched and tried to grab for any part of him, managing only to grip the collar of his suit jacket.</p><p>‘Don't let go, for God's sake!’ Yvonne yelled.</p><p>‘I'm trying!’ he grunted, desperately trying to pull himself up through the narrow gap. He forced his forearm upwards, using his elbow to gain leverage, and somehow, miraculously pulled himself up enough to get his shoulders up above the edge, pulling himself the rest of the way out on his stomach.</p><p>Yvonne could hear the lift continuing to ascend. It couldn't be more than a few floors below her now as she hurried up a few more rungs, trying to reach across for the doorway herself. Ianto was there, forcing it open wide and reaching out a hand to her.</p><p>‘You'll have to let go of that ladder!’ he called out to her.</p><p>She froze, unable to relinquish her grip. The distance between her and the open doorway seemed impossibly wide. She looked down, the lift driving ever upwards, maybe only ten feet below her now. She was out of time. She waited a few seconds more until it was only a foot or two beneath her, stepping across its top and throwing herself out through the door as as it flew up past her, sealing off the doorway before it continued up, leaving behind a bottomless drop. She crashed into Ianto, sending them both sprawling to the floor, awkwardly ending up on top of him.</p><p>‘Good job,’ she panted.</p><p>‘Likewise,’ he replied, sounding just as out of breath. ‘And on the plus side, still got my gun,’ he said, pulling it from his pocket where it was digging uncomfortably into his side.</p><p>‘We might be needing that,’ Yvonne replied, pushing herself to her feet. She stood and looked around. She could barely recognise her beloved Torchwood Tower. The walls had streaks of black sliding down them where once there'd been signage or swipe card access panels. Beyond the glass-walled offices, there were thick piles of sludge in mounds on the floor or on desks where once there'd been ergonomic chairs and computer consoles.</p><p>‘Urgh!’ Yvonne squealed in disgust as a large blob of oil dropped from the melted plastic light fitting overhead, hitting her shoulder and continuing its path down her cream coloured lapels, leaving a dirty brown stain.</p><p>‘Dry cleaners are going to hate you,’ Ianto teased, staring up at her from his spot on the floor, grinning up at her stupidly.</p><p>Yvonne resisted the urge to wipe at it with her hand and childishly smear the remainder on Ianto's own suit.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto lay on the floor a moment longer, staring up at that same light fitting that had unceremoniously dumped on Yvonne's finely tailored jacket. Perhaps if he closed his eyes and re-opened them, he'd discover that this was all some bad dream, set on by too much alcohol at the pub where he should have been hours ago. Correction: had been hours ago, since this was a dream. Perhaps someone there had slipped him some mind-altering drug that had him imagining all kinds of crazy stuff. He let them slide shut, enjoying that brief moment of nothing and then opened them again, but finding the nightmarish corridor still overhead. Worth a try, he told himself, finally getting to his feet.</p><p>‘Safe to say the alien swarm has been through here,’ he mused, thinking about the hellish job the building cleaners were going to have, mopping up all of this muck. Not to mention of course the cost of replacing everything that had been destroyed thus far. He supposed his own computer was now a pile of sludge, along with everything else on his desk: the cup of pens, his stapler, the laminated mouse pad, and his Mr Bean bobble head - a tragic Kris Kringle gift he now couldn't bear to part with. Ironic to think that the tinsel people had hung around the office had survived, leaving a slightly ironic festive feel to the carnage.</p><p>‘Eaten what it wanted and moved on by the looks of things,’ she agreed, taking in the once pristine white walls, now dripping with black, like some macabre house of horrors.</p><p>He watched Yvonne step back towards the lift door, pressing the up button on the panel and waiting. She pressed it a few more times, doing that annoying thing that irritated Ianto. Pressing the button multiple times didn't make lifts come any faster, nor make traffic lights change any quicker. It also didn't work on computers, belting the enter key fifteen times and expecting the computer to respond faster. He could stand there at the pedestrian crossing and watch two dozen people all take a turn at pressing the button, knowing it was already activated. What was it that compelled people to press buttons all the time? Was it just something to fill in time whilst they waited, or did they genuinely think it made a difference?</p><p>When the lift didn't return, simply leaving a gaping hole in the wall and a three hundred foot drop, Yvonne shrugged. ‘Worth a try,’ she said.</p><p>Ianto peered down the dark shaft. ‘I'm not sure I want to take a lift anyway.’ Sudden visions of it plummeting with them inside flooded his mind.</p><p>‘Alright, let's go.’ Yvonne turned on her heel, about to step into a pile of goo before stopping and gingerly stepping over it in her unshod feet. ‘Actually, you go first,’ she said. He took it as an order rather than a suggestion, avoiding the same pile of muck. ‘Aren't you forgetting something?’ she asked, quirking an eye at him.</p><p>He cast a glance back the way they'd come, seeing only the empty doorway which strangely now refused to close.</p><p>‘Phone,’ Yvonne said, supply the answer for him. ‘Unless you prefer not knowing you're about to be eaten alive. We only think they've moved on.’</p><p>He gave an awkward little cough, extracting the phone from his pocket. Despite having used it very little, the bars indicating the remaining battery life were continuing to descend. ‘Don't suppose someone had a phone charger around here,’ he muttered.</p><p>‘I wouldn't count on it, Ianto. Assuming the outer coating and plug aren't now a pile of oil.’ She cast a glance around. ‘Level twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe? We've still got a ways to go.’</p><p>‘And we're assuming it hasn't spread that far yet,’ he reminded her.</p><p>‘It's moving fast, so we have to as well. We have to be there when the lockdown releases and stretches further out, and try to get access to the mainframe before the swarm takes over and destroys the system.’</p><p>Ianto held up the phone and began scanning the area immediately around them. As an afterthought, he extracted the stun gun, having seen Yvonne already gripping hers. He lead them forward; tentative at first and then with growing confidence as the screen in front of him remained clear.</p><p>‘Just out of curiosity, what happens when the lockdown spreads to the whole building?’ he asked, turning the scanner to check behind them as well as in front.</p><p>‘You really want to know?’</p><p>‘Probably not, but tell me anyway.’</p><p>‘If a full lockdown begins to fail, the systems inside the building are set to trigger Phase Two: a full irradiation of every floor, every vent and every room. Strong enough to knock out just about anything.’</p><p>Ianto nearly dropped the phone from his hand as he stood there in shock. ‘We'll be nuked? What the hell kind of system is that?’</p><p>‘One that protects the outside world.’</p><p>‘That doesn't seem very helpful if you're stuck inside. You're telling me you've got radioactive material all over the building, just waiting to set it off? Please tell me there isn't a Phase Three.’</p><p>Yvonne made to brush past him. ‘We don't talk about Phase Three. That is the absolute last resort when there are no other options.’</p><p>He grabbed her by the elbow, no longer caring about impropriety. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded.</p><p>She stopped, looking him straight in the eye. ‘There is a network of satellites in space that are programmed to align and focus a single beam of stored light collected from the sun. The entirety of Torchwood Tower would be annihilated by a laser strike burning at over six thousand degrees celsius.’</p><p>‘Oh, good. Here was me thinking you'd annihilate the entire planet, but it’s only Canary Wharf. That's loads better. We'll still be just as dead, but at least everyone else can carry on and admire London's latest tourist attraction: The giant crater. It'll be a real hit.’ He turned and began walking away, feeling his anger rising.</p><p>Yvonne huffed at him like an annoyed schoolteacher. ‘If you're inside when everything goes pear-shaped then that's just tough luck. That's the price for working at Torchwood: you either solve the problem or you die.’</p><p>He was definitely beginning to get that impression, though he kept the thought to himself. Funny how he'd never felt like this was a dangerous job before. He did paperwork, and dangerous alien stuff was just a bunch of wild rumours. It probably should have been covered off more clearly in the employee handbook. He sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it out, hoping to ease some of the tension in his shoulders, as well as his temper.</p><p>He raised the phone in front of him and scanned the immediate area, before stepping forward. He'd never been up this high, seeing the facilities that looked so modern and alien compared to his own boring run of the mill desk. His desk was just was one of dozens of identical cubicles. Even the cafeteria was more modern, with its oddly shaped plastic molded chairs that came in garish hues of yellow and orange. Up here it was much more like the sub-basement where he'd started his journey.</p><p>‘Medical research?’ he hazarded a guess, peering behind the frosted glass windows at the long rows of benches and equipment beyond them.</p><p>‘Cutting edge stem cell growth, neural pathway regeneration, antiviral testing, genetic cloning…’ Yvonne rattled off. She sounded almost bored instead of proud.</p><p>None of it meant much to him, picturing scientists in lab coats attempting to clone sheep. He'd always thought one sheep look pretty much like the next and was there really any point in cloning something that reproduced perfectly well without scientific intervention?</p><p>‘Just so I know,’ Ianto began, ‘you know, in case we don't make it. Are there any other aliens in the building?’</p><p>Yvonne gave him a smirk. ‘More than you know.’</p><p>He was busy taking in a large glass beaker positioned in the middle of one room. It was the size of a beach ball and contained a strange amber liquid, filling it about a third of the way. It looked like scotch, though he was certain it wasn't. He could do with a stiff drink right about now, but his phone had other ideas. It began to glow in his hand, catching the corner of his eye as it moved from a view of black and white interior, to a greenish haze. ‘Uh…’ he trailed off, attracting Yvonne’s attention.</p><p>Yvonne didn't need the image from the phone's camera to know that they were in trouble. The air shimmered and the view beyond it became blurry, like heat rising off the pavement on a scorching summer day. The sheer mass of what she could see sent chills down her spine.</p><p>Ianto saw her raise her gun, grim-faced, and shoot. He expected his own would remain plastered at his side, just like before, frozen in fear. Instead his arm lifted reflexively with an unbidden confidence that surprised him, squeezing the trigger the same way he had dozens of times in training. He could only assume it was his self-preservation instincts kicking in as he heard the sharp zap the gun emitted.</p><p>Yvonne shot twice more at the optical illusion before taking a step back to stand beside him. ‘Give me that,’ she barked, ripping his phone from his grasp to get a better look. She held it up and saw the tiny hole their shots had made, but more disconcerting was the sheer size of the surrounding swarm. ‘Oh, shit,’ she muttered, seeing the thick field of green.</p><p>Ianto was startled at the sudden grip of his shirt collar, letting out an unmanly sound as it strangled him. ‘Go! Now!’ Yvonne commanded. ‘Get out!’ she added, tugging him sideways and then pushing him in the opposite direction. He didn't argue. He ran hard, not caring whether he was running straight into danger. All he knew was that the swarm was behind him. Whatever lay ahead of him had to be better.</p><p>Ianto didn't have to look over his shoulder to know Yvonne was hot on his heels right behind him. For a short woman with no shoes, her feet were pounding hard, finally overtaking him and reaching for one of the glass laboratory doors, tugging it open.</p><p>‘Inside!’</p><p>He barely squeezed through the narrow opening before she forced it shut behind him and then kept running towards the back of the lab. A large windowed room loomed in one corner, like an isolation chamber of some kind. She hastily keyed a code on its panel. Ianto heard the doors open with a hiss and she shoved him inside without preamble, following quickly and sealing it shut. She held up the phone, still in her hand, seeing the swarm of green uselessly buffet the doors. It couldn't get in.</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne let out a breath of relief, leaning heavily against the side wall.</p><p>Ianto still had his eyes squeezed shut tight, ready to be eaten alive. When nothing happened, he slowly opened them. ‘We're not dead,’ he cried. ‘How are we not dead?’</p><p>Yvonne brushed a few stray hairs back from her face, recomposing herself. ‘I'll bet your glad of all that fancy shmancy steel and glass now, aren't you?’ she asked.</p><p>Ianto stood up straighter now that he was reasonably assured death had once again evaded them, even if only temporarily. ‘What is this room?’</p><p>‘State of the art biological cleanroom. Complete with its own electromagnetic field to prevent interference from external equipment and uninterrupted power supply,’ Yvonne replied, sounding proud. ‘Nothing gets in, nothing gets out.’</p><p>‘Including us,’ he said.</p><p>‘Better than being dead, isn't it?’</p><p>He gave a little nod. Anything had to be better than being dead. ‘And we're not going to run out of air in here or anything like that?’</p><p>‘This room can be fully operational for up to eight hours without needing to be ventilated.’</p><p>He pressed a hand to the glass, feeling how cold it was. ‘And will it, you know, stop us from being irradiated?’</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>‘Oh,’ he said, setting his gun down on the thin white bench. ‘Well, that's… good to know,’ he trailed off.</p><p>‘We're not staying in here,’ she told him, setting the phone down and fiddling with her own gun, checking the charge left in its power cell.</p><p>He reclaimed his phone and cast a slow circle through the clear glass windows of the cleanroom, seeing nothing but green. They were utterly surrounded, particles hovering all around the cleanroom, watching, waiting, like he and Yvonne were a TV dinner in a microwave, just waiting for it to ping and announce they were ready. ‘Have you told them that?’ he asked.</p><p>‘It's clearly got some low level sentience. It wants material to consume and we're inaccessible. I'm rather banking on the fact that they'll lose interest leave eventually.’</p><p>‘Would that be before or after it's too late to do anything to stop them?’</p><p>Yvonne gave a tired sigh, sinking down to the floor and pulling her knees up to her chin. ‘You could be more grateful, you know.’</p><p>‘Probably,’ he admitted, settling down on the floor opposite, so that they both had a side on view of the swarm waiting outside. Even without the phone's scanner, there was enough mass to the swarm that it caused ripples in the air that were clearly visible. ‘This is bad,’ he said, staring out into the nothingness. He didn't waste any more of his precious phone battery. He knew what was out there. ‘How could one little container of aliens have multiplied so quickly?’</p><p>‘Because it's been leaking out for hours,’ Yvonne said.</p><p>Ianto paused, unsure he'd head correctly. ‘What?’</p><p>‘I was about to call Raj in to check it out when I ran into you. Not enough to trip our sensors and commence a full lockdown at that stage, obviously, but enough to start chewing through whatever it could find. I imagine it was spreading out before finally gaining enough mass and sentience to form the swarm we're seeing now. I hoped Raj could get his team here before it became a problem.’</p><p>Ianto sat there and stared at her, gobsmacked. ‘You knew!’</p><p>She gave a sigh and another of those impatient looks. ‘I suspected.’</p><p>Ianto planted his palms on the floor beside him, ready to propel himself forward or up, whichever was warranted. The realisations began to tumble through his mind one after the other, like a snowball gathering momentum down a hill.</p><p>‘You knew what was down here and you dragged me along anyway! You could have warned me there was a situation. You could've made sure I got out before the lockdown sealed us in. You could have sent me outside to get help.’ He could feel himself getting a head full of steam now, no longer his usual reserved self, but channeling the kind of fury his Welshness was famous for. ‘You could have made sure I was out of harm's way. But no, instead you thought it would be better to try and get both of us killed!’</p><p>‘Oh, stop being so dramatic! Chances are with your paltry security credentials you wouldn't have been let out of the building anyway.’</p><p>Ianto gave an annoyed sigh. ‘Could you, just for five whole minutes, stop being such an insufferable know it all?’</p><p>Yvonne felt like she'd been slapped. She cocked her head to one side, letting a leg stretch out in front of her and folding her arms across her chest. ‘Excuse me?’</p><p>‘You,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You act like you're completely in control and have the answers for everything but clearly you don't or we wouldn't be in this mess right now.’</p><p>Yvonne scoffed. ‘That seems rich coming from you. You who didn't even understand what we really do here until a few hours ago. I still doubt you understand.’</p><p>‘Because you don't think any of us should know. Because we're not important enough.’ From her expression he could tell she was losing patience with him.</p><p>‘It's so much more complicated than that, Ianto. We can't just go around telling everyone about aliens. Can you imagine the panic that would cause? Can you?’</p><p>‘We have a right to know what we're walking into every day.’</p><p>‘You know as much as you need to do your job. You signed the Official Secrets Act.’</p><p>‘But you recruited me! You turned up at my flat and-’</p><p>She held up a hand and silenced him with it. ‘I recruit a lot of people. You seriously expect me to remember you?’</p><p>He faltered for a moment. ‘But… my flat.’</p><p>He could still remember it like it was yesterday - that officious knock on the door, the two heavies that had accompanied her. He'd thought they were police and began wondering what he'd done to warrant trouble. He'd kept his nose clean since leaving Cardiff, having brought more than enough shame to his family already. Perhaps they were looking for Soren, his flatmate and closest friend, though he didn't seem like the troublemaking type either. What he hadn't expected was for Yvonne to come striding into his flat, offering him a job and slapping the contract down on the grimy formica bench top, telling him he started Monday. There was barely time to stop by his local coffee shop and tell them he was resigning and could someone pick up his last shift, before rushing to the high street to buy some work appropriate wardrobe.</p><p>Yvonne laughed as if he'd said something particularly amusing. ‘Did you think I turned up having picked you especially?’</p><p>That feeling of certainty, that Yvonne should remember him, began to slip away into a pool of deep seated doubt. ‘Well…’</p><p>‘Computers,’ Yvonne replied, cutting him off. ‘It's all high end computer algorithms. They scan every employment and educational record across the city, and come up with people who are a perfect fit for our organisation. We don't have underperformers at Torchwood. The software has a ninety-nine point three percent accuracy rating for recruitment. We're after the best, and those that will excel in what we ask of them.’</p><p>‘And me?’ Ianto suddenly wanted to know why some piece of software thought he was a good candidate. Mediocre academic records and a flair for making a decent cappuccino. It hardly screamed employee of the month.</p><p>Yvonne gave a disinterested look. ‘What is it you do again?’</p><p>He fiddled with the cuff of his shirt, tugging at it. ‘I, um… well, it's mostly spreadsheets and filing, really. A bit of research here and there. Stuff no one else wants to do, generally.’ Was that the answer he'd been looking for? Had Torchwood's software checked him out and given him the big green tick for subservient pleb with basic computer skills?</p><p>‘And no doubt you find that sort of work both interesting and easy?’</p><p>He cast his eyes down into his lap. ‘I suppose.’ His boss wasn't exactly the effusive, praising kind, but he'd never not delivered on time, and often did so ahead of time. That seemed to result only in lumping him with even more work. It didn't pay to be too efficient was the message he got.</p><p>‘Every organisation needs low level office workers,’ Yvonne said, confirming his suspicions. ‘Even ours. You were matched by the computers. Don't take it personally that I don't know who you are or what you do,’ she said, feigning sympathy, ‘Just be grateful that you work for the greatest and most powerful organisation in the world.’</p><p>‘The world?’ He'd been to some of their all staff briefings over the past few months, but this was far beyond corporate pride. Some might call it fanaticism.</p><p>‘We're global, Ianto. Offices in every major political capital in the world. And all run right from here in London. We're tracking down aliens and artifacts all over the globe, putting them to use, learning from them, shaping the future. We can't rely on the world's leaders and politicians to drive the planet into the twenty-first century. Only we have the technology and the foresight to make it happen.’</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto sat there and studied his hand where it rested on top of his knees. Under his fingernail he could make out the black stain that had lodged itself under the nail and began trying to dig it out, avoiding having to look at either Yvonne or the world outside their confined quarters. He couldn't say for certain that he was sulking, but right now he didn't want to be here. He wanted to be in Yvonne's company even less. Dying on Christmas Eve most definitely didn't come into the equation. What had he done to deserve this?</p><p>Overhead the lights buzzed and crackled. How much longer until they went out altogether, he wondered. He pulled his legs tight up against his chest, hugging them and burying his head in the tiny space between. In that space all he could see was darkness and all he could hear was the sound of his own breath. In. Out. In. Out. Slow and calm, considering their predicament. It was a nice place, far from Torchwood and Yvonne Hartman; far from aliens and politics and death.</p><p>He closed his eyes and just focused on that slow sound of his own breathing, like having his ear pressed to a conch shell on a beach. It almost sounded like waves crashing on the shore. If he listened carefully and didn't open his eyes, he could be on a beach right now. Beaches with waves, sandcastles and seashells and ice cream cones…</p><p>There was a sound amongst the crashing waves. A seagull perhaps. It squealed faintly like a distant bird, but wrong somehow. It squealed again and he realised it was a beep and not a bird. The beep and a slight vibration were coming from his trouser pocket. He lifted his head tugging the phone from his pocket. The battery icon ticked down from twenty percent to nineteen as he stared at it.</p><p>‘Oh, look at that, I've got phone reception. No, wait, it's gone again.’</p><p>Yvonne stared up at him, her eyes glinting with hope. ‘You managed to get a message out?’</p><p>‘Nope, just texts from my flatmate Soren,’ he replied, scrolling down the screen and reading the string of questions that Soren had peppered his phone with all night, reaching him only now that he was about as far out of reach as he could possibly be. ‘Wants to know when I'm meeting him at the pub or if I've blown him off do stay home and do the laundry.’</p><p>‘You do lead a small life.’</p><p>He looked back down at the phone, re-reading the string of messages. Perhaps his life was rather small and insular, but he thought it was okay. He had friends; he had a flat that he could afford within walking distance of the tube, a good coffee shop only a block away that doubled as an excellent place for a ham and egg fry up on a ragged, slightly still too hungover, Sunday morning. He'd come to London for a fresh start away from his troubles back home in Wales and that's what he'd done. What he'd discovered was that the world was so much bigger than the tiny patch where he'd grown up. But for his family he'd probably never go back there.</p><p>‘Not how I imagined spending Christmas,’ he murmured, wishing he could take back those thoughts of how much he wouldn't miss home. Being curled up on that tatty old sofa at his mum's house with a blanket and a cup of tea, watching Corrie, would have been heaven.</p><p>‘Close enough to how I imagined it,’ Yvonne replied, surprising him.</p><p>‘Don't you have family?’</p><p>‘A sister in Essex with three screaming monsters at last count; probably a fourth by now. No ambition whatsoever. She stretched out her other leg, wriggling her toes before crossing one ankle over the other and considered him. ‘Why would anyone want that? I mean obviously someone has to keep the population going, but why is it always the ones lacking any intelligence or promise? All we're doing is filling the next generation with uninspired, undisciplined individuals. What kind of a future is that for the human race? Look at you,’ she said, raising her hand in his direction before flopping it uselessly back into her lap. ‘Grew up on some council estate, didn't you? Not a thing going for you until we gave you a purpose, was there? We've given you the opportunity to be someone, albeit a very small someone, but still…’</p><p>He thought over his life and tried to understand what she meant. Yes, it hadn't been the best part of town, but he'd never lacked for anything. They had a dog, they went for summer holidays down to the beach, he went to school, and had clean clothes that weren't hand-me-downs from someone else they knew. He thought he'd been aspiring to more since he'd moved cities but perhaps it wasn't enough. Perhaps he'd been raised to become content with having very little.</p><p>‘Do you want to know why I'm still here, Ianto? Why I'm still working when everyone else has gone home?’</p><p>Because you despise your family? he felt like saying. ‘No,’ he said instead.</p><p>‘Because it's Christmas Eve.’</p><p>Ianto frowned. He was missing something obvious, that much was clear.</p><p>‘Do you know what happens on Christmas Eve in London?’</p><p>He gave her his best vacant stare.</p><p>‘The Doctor, that's what. Shop mannequins murdering people on the street. Alien spaceships in the sky. Masses of people whose minds are taken over, standing on the edge of city buildings, ready to throw themselves off.’ She listed off the string of incidents as if he should recall them all clearly. Instead he looked at her blankly.</p><p>Yvonne rolled her eyes. ‘What blood type are you?’</p><p>It sounded like a trick question. ‘A positive?’</p><p>‘Bless you. Of course you don't know anything about that. Because we covered it all up. Made it seem like a load of rubbish perpetuated by clinically insane journalists. That's what we do. The world just simply isn't ready to know about aliens, so we protect people by keeping them oblivious. Not that they need worry, of course. We've developed more than enough weaponry to take on any invading force should it attempt an attack. But the Doctor is another matter entirely. The Doctor is a threat unlike any other, and one that must be dealt with using a very delicate approach.’</p><p>‘Are you saying that he's coming tonight?’</p><p>‘More than likely,’ she said, waggling a stockinged toe. ‘And God only knows what mayhem he'll bring with him. That's why it's up to us to keep our eyes and ears open.’</p><p>‘So, Torchwood has stopped him in the past?’ Ianto knew very little about the Doctor except what had been drilled into them at various briefings. He was said to take on human appearance but that he was in fact an alien himself. That was why Ianto had the Torchwood app on his phone. Part of their job, outside of work hours, was to use it to scan anyone they thought looked suspicious. The software on their phones was capable of taking any number of scans, cross-referencing it to a known database of alien species, and alerting their security teams to any entity that need apprehending.</p><p>He'd thought it was all a bit bogus, in truth. Aliens roaming the streets? He'd toyed with the app on his lunch breaks, sitting out in the middle of the bustling Canary Wharf precinct. He'd surreptitiously tried locking his phone’s camera onto a handful of buskers and homeless folk, and one odd woman ranting that the end was nigh, but every time he'd used it, the readings came back the same: human. After a few tries, he'd given up. The only time he used the app now was to read the propaganda that got pushed out through it. Until tonight he hadn't actually thought it was capable of identifying aliens at all.</p><p>‘You don't think the Doctor has something to do with what's happening now, do you?’ Ianto said, voicing his concerns.</p><p>‘I don't know,’ Yvonne replied slowly and purposefully. ‘But let's just say this would very much be his style.’</p><p>‘Could he come and save us?’</p><p>Yvonne scoffed a laugh. ‘You really are too much. Just when I thought the worst thing would be to have Jack Harkness storm in here to save the day.’</p><p>‘He would though, wouldn't he? The Doctor, I mean,’ Ianto clarified. He didn't know any of what Yvonne was talking about, alien spaceships, mass mind control. It all sounded completely insane. All he knew about the Doctor was what had been ingrained in him from his Torchwood induction. Public enemy number one. Apprehend at all costs. Why would Torchwood want to lock up someone who supposedly had saved the city more than once? It didn't make any sense.</p><p>‘We're going to die down here, aren't we?’ Ianto moaned.</p><p>‘Ianto, listen to me, we are not going to die. Do you understand? We're Torchwood.’</p><p>Ianto scoffed. ‘You're Torchwood,’ he replied. ‘I'm just a nobody.’</p><p>‘You work here, don't you?’</p><p>‘Yes, but you just said-’</p><p>‘Oh, forget what I just said. You knew something was wrong so you went looking for someone to tell, you've seen your first dead body, seen it be disintegrated into a pile of crude oil, climbed up the inside of a lift and nearly gotten killed in the process and come face to face with an alien swarm intent on killing you. If you're not sitting in the corner sucking your thumb and crying for your mum by now, you're going to be okay.’ She sat up a little straighter. ‘Like I said, our recruitment software is ninety-nine point three percent accurate.’</p><p>Ianto sighed. Yes, he'd grown up in a rough part of town. There'd been gangs and drugs and graffiti. He'd been in one of the former and done plenty of the latter - but none of the drugs, just a few sneaky cigarettes - because that was what you did to fit in and avoid being the local punching bag. Some of them had guns, and most of them small pocket knives, but he'd never felt unsafe. Then again, he knew them. He knew what it would take for one of them to brandish a weapon and actually intend on using it. Mostly it was just empty threats, meant to scare the locals. None of them really had the guts to use them.</p><p>This was different, though. This alien wasn't someone he'd grown up with all his life, someone he could negotiate with or avoid. It didn't discriminate between one of the lads and that toff prat who runs the Spar on Covent Road who always gave them grief every time they went in. Maybe it didn't even understand what killing was.</p><p>The lights dimmed overhead and this time they didn't flicker back into life, leaving them in a semi-dark world, everything at half power and looking like it was struggling to manage even that much.</p><p>‘I'm guessing systems that used to power the containment field have determined it to be the bigger threat, and all the power is being diverted to the lock down,’ he mused out loud.</p><p>‘A last line of defence,’ Yvonne muttered.</p><p>‘And then we get nuked.’</p><p>‘It won't come to that. Torchwood Tower is completely isolated from the rest of Canary Wharf. It's not getting out. It can chew through whatever it likes in here.’</p><p>‘Yes, but you're still connected to the mainstream power. Just think of all cabling stretching out to London’s main power grid.’</p><p>‘Fibre optic cabling, not plastic,’ Yvonne replied.</p><p>Ianto pondered that for a moment, feeling momentarily relieved until another thought crossed his mind. ‘What about water supplies? Bathroom plumbing. That's plastic, isn't it?’</p><p>‘Oh, bother. An alien entity eating public sewerage piping, that's just… too disgusting for words. It hasn't found that yet, though. That's gives us time.’ She pushed up off the floor. ‘We need to go.’</p><p>‘Go where?’</p><p>‘Down the pub for a pint,’ she snarked. ‘Where the hell do you think? Presidium is leaking out and forming swarms. It's feeding off the plastic coating of the internal electrical cabling. If it finds the plumbing system, it's going to spread all across London in no time. Just imagine the kind of mass it could create with that much edible material.’</p><p>‘And you're not worried that the minute we step out of here, it's going to eat us, instead?’</p><p>‘Unlike you, this suit is one hundred percent wool. They'll have to get through that first.’</p><p>‘But I'll bet those nylon stockings aren't,’ he said, nodding at her feet.</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne considered her still shoeless toes. ‘That is true,’ she admitted, before catching him staring at her legs a little longer than was considered appropriate. ‘Don't think I'm taking them off. I'm still leader around here.’ She swept her hair back from her face. ‘Some of us have to maintain some semblance of dignity.’</p><p>Ianto leant forward, resting his elbows back on his knees. ‘I'm guessing by now the swarm has probably eaten through every computer cable north of here. Not much point trying to get to your office I should think.’</p><p>‘Fine, we'll just give up then, shall we?’ Yvonne huffed. ‘The power is on the blink, the computers are all fried and we have no way of contacting the outside world to warn them that an alien swarm is coming to eat everything in its path.’</p><p>‘Hang on. The computers are down, but they're not all down are they?’</p><p>Yvonne ran a tired hand through her hair as she stared around the glass-walled room, feeling like a lab rat. She sighed heavily. ‘Of course they are, Ianto. That's the whole bloody point.’</p><p>He pushed himself to his feet came to stand in front of her, his blue eyes sparkling. How could he suddenly look so upbeat at a time like this, she wondered. Those permanently happy people had always sickened her. They were the ones that always came in with a chirpy disposition, even if it had been raining all morning, their train ran late and they'd been left waiting in a mile long queue at the cafe where they picked up their regular latte. There were times when she didn't half wish they might get hit by a bus, just to bring them back down to earth and realise that life was equal parts wonderful and shit.</p><p>She gave him a weary look, setting a hand on her hip. ‘There are no computers, Ianto,’ she repeated. ‘If they've destroyed the network cabling, that's it.’</p><p>‘You can't be one hundred percent certain,’ he insisted.</p><p>‘I can, actually.’ She held out her palm. ‘Phone.’</p><p>She heard the tiny little sigh as he relinquished it yet again at her command. With a few taps, she showed him her proof. ‘See there? We can't even connect to Torchwood's servers from your phone. No Wi-Fi, no servers.’</p><p>‘There might still be one.’</p><p>‘Bless you for being glass half full, but now really isn't the time.’</p><p>He gripped her by the shoulders and she was about to tell him to get his hands off her when he cut her off with a stern look. ‘Listen. A couple of times my boss made me go and retrieve some old files from Basement Four. It's the old archive from Torchwood House. It's a big old server and a dumb terminal,’</p><p>‘Is that why they sent you?’ she joked.</p><p>Ianto ignored her thinly veiled insult. ‘But it's not connected to the main Torchwood network. I asked about it because I'd assumed I could just run a search from my own workstation. They meant to connect it up and synchronise it with our systems, but they never did. I had to go down there and manually run searches or pore through old physical files.’</p><p>‘A nice thought, perhaps, but it'll still be subject to the cabling being destroyed.’</p><p>He gave her another one of those sickeningly upbeat smiles. ‘Only it won't, because it's stuck inside one of those hermetic vaults with all the old records. It's sealed off from the outside environment. The locks are air pressured, not electronic, meaning we could get in there, but the swarm won't have.’</p><p>Yvonne paused and thought about this. ‘If it's not connected to the main servers, then maybe it's not affected by the lock down communication protocols either.’</p><p>‘Exactly.’</p><p>She reached up and grabbed his face. ‘Oh, I could almost kiss you.’</p><p>‘Almost?’ he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.</p><p>‘Don't get too excited,’ she said, pulling her hands away with slight embarrassment at her outburst. ‘I'm not that desperate.’ She smoothed down her skirt and handed him back his phone, but not before checking that the green cloud that had been lying in wait for them had, as expected, now disappeared. ‘Basement Four, you say?’ Ianto nodded. ‘Right, well it'll be within the current lockdown area. All we need is to make it there.’</p><p>‘Easier said than done,’ Ianto replied, looking grim again. ‘We have to go out there?’</p><p>‘If we don't. Who will? We're the only ones in here who can do anything. I'd rather die trying than do nothing.’</p><p>‘But how do we get all the way down there without being eaten alive? The swarm could be anywhere, and everywhere.’</p><p>‘The same way we came up of course.’</p><p>Yvonne couldn't help but feel slightly pleased as any residual cheeriness fell from his face. ‘I was afraid you'd say that.’</p><p>‘Is it out there right now?’</p><p>Ianto scanned the lab beyond their confined space. There wasn't a spec of green anywhere. ‘No. Looks like you were right. It's moved on.’</p><p>‘Right, here we go, then. It's now or never,’ she said, taking off.</p><p>‘For Queen and county,’ Ianto muttered, gripping the gun tightly and following after her.</p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yvonne reached the main laboratory doors, peering out through them into the darkened hallway. ‘Now, I want you to go out there and see if there's any evidence of the swarm,’ she instructed.</p><p>‘Me? Again?’</p><p>‘Yes, you. With any luck they've moved on completely, heading higher. If you start screaming, I promise I'll do my best to help.’</p><p>He made a mental note to scream as loud as he could at the first sign of trouble and extracted his phone. Twelve percent battery left. At fifteen percent it would have been nagging him to plug it into a wall to charge. Now it had just given him up as a lost cause. ‘Will this still work? You said it's not connected to the network anymore.’</p><p>‘The software has been downloaded directly onto your phone. It doesn't need to be connected to the network,’ she replied. ‘I had to free up a bit of space for it so I hope you don't mind. You may have lost a few photos and your high score records on Candy Crush.’</p><p>‘I don't play Candy Crush.’</p><p>‘Oh well,’ she shrugged. ‘Something else then.’</p><p>He sucked in a breath, feeling her eyes on him, waiting expectantly as he steeled himself for the task. If he chickened out he knew she'd have no qualms in shoving him out the door herself. Instead of waiting for the inevitable, he raised a tentative hand to the door, readying to slide it open.</p><p>‘Ianto?’</p><p>‘Yes?’</p><p>‘Aren't you forgetting something?’ She rolled her eyes, not bothering to wait for a response. ‘Gun,’ she said. ‘Might not stop it from killing you, but you never know.’</p><p>He looked back at the cleanroom, seeing it still sitting there on the bench where he'd left it. His subconscious at work, he decided. ‘You know I never really did like guns,’ he said, reluctantly returning to collect it.</p><p>‘Well, if we survive tonight, you'll probably never have to worry about using one again. Except for mandatory training, of course. And if we don't, well…’ She left the consequences of their failure to his very active imagination.</p><p>‘Thanks for the pep talk,’ he said, slipping out through a narrow gap in the door, and hearing it slide resolutely back shut behind him.</p><p>The place had creeped him out a little bit when it had been fully lit. Now that it was darker, he couldn't see half of what might be lurking. Feeling gobs of cool black oil drip on his head and down the back of his collar made him jump out of his skin.</p><p>Keep your head, he told himself. It's just a bit of oil. Not some killer slime about to gorge itself on your flesh. I don't think.</p><p>He scanned left then right, wishing his phone didn't illuminate his face quite so much. He felt like a sitting duck, lighting himself up like a Christmas tree for everyone to see.</p><p>He stepped tentatively forward, retracing his steps. Even in the dark he had no trouble navigating his path. Despite their hurried escape earlier and the fact that he'd never been this high up in Torchwood Tower until tonight, he had a near photographic memory. He also knew, though he could never explain how, just how many turns he'd taken - left, right,  straight ahead - through corridors that sometimes left even the regular staff scratching their heads. Torchwood was like a rabbit warren, a maze of offices and laboratories, cafeterias and restricted access areas, of uniformed soldiers and everyday folk like him who never gave any of it a thought.</p><p>Having finally confirmed a clear path back to where they'd begun, he carefully prised open the lift doors, sticking his arm through to confirm they weren't about to walk themselves right into the jaws of the swarm. He wasn't sure how they might get inside, but then again, Yvonne had said almost nothing could contain them. A little bit of concrete wasn't going to slow them down. He realised only now that they hadn't been safe in here before, it had just seemed that way. The swarm hadn't known they were in there, and there was nothing inside for them to consume. It was good luck, more than good planning, that had kept them alive.</p><p>The emergency lights that had lit their way upward earlier were gone now. It was somehow more terrifying not being able to see just how far down the lift well plunged, but at least there was no sign of the swarm. Satisfied that their path was safe, at least for now, he hurried back, pausing only to double check open doorways on his return, and wishing he'd had the good sense to close them at the time, for all the good that might have done. If the swarm wanted to get inside it would probably just pass straight through the walls and not bother with open doors. He quickly found himself standing back outside the lab, giving Yvonne a silent thumbs up.</p><p>She slipped out through the door, her gun already clutched in her hand as if she expected trouble. ‘What took you so long?’</p><p>‘What took me?’ He bit back the rest of his response. ‘Can we please go now? You know, whilst there's still a chance we might make it out of here alive?’</p><p>‘Alright, no need to be so pushy. Honestly, is it the Welsh in you, or are you naturally like this?’</p><p>‘Let's go before I decide to find out whether this gun is as effective on humans.’</p><p>‘Pushy…’ Yvonne trailed off.</p><p>They jogged the whole way, coming to stop in front of the lift. Ianto slipped his gun back into his belt and pulled open one of the doors. ‘There's no light down there. You'll just have to feel your way across to the ladder.’</p><p>‘Or you could use the torch on that phone,’ Yvonne suggested.</p><p>‘Of course I could,’ he replied, hoping his accommodating tone didn't sound too put on. Eight percent left. He cringed.</p><p>Yvonne pressed herself against the edge of the door, almost hugging it. Behind her, Ianto extended his arm, trying to direct the small light source in the general direction of the ladder embedded in the side wall. Yvonne reached out a toe, feeling for the rung. Once she located it, she reached out her right hand, gripping the rung at shoulder height. Sucking in a breath, she put her weight on her right side, holding firm until her left hand and foot could find purchase. She blew out that same breath, now safely clinging to the ladder. ‘I'm good.’ She clambered up a few rungs, giving Ianto a clear space.</p><p>‘I thought we were going down?’</p><p>‘We are, but on off the chance you fall, I didn't want you killing us both.’</p><p>‘Gee, thanks. How considerate of you.’</p><p>He had an easier time of reaching out to grip the ladder than Yvonne, his height and long limbs a natural advantage, offset against the fact that he couldn't see a damn thing, and that the other half of his body was the only thing keeping the door open. He let go and clutched the ladder, the door slipping quietly and smoothly shut, plunging them into complete black.</p><p>‘Onwards and downwards, then,’ he muttered, beginning to climb.</p><p>He descended for what felt like an eternity, the muscles in his thighs beginning to burn as were the ones in his biceps. The only sound was the echoing of his shoes on the metal rungs and his own heavy breathing. Above him Yvonne was virtually silent except for the occasional invective, which may or may not have been directed at him. Admittedly, it was actually easier going down in the pitch black, using muscle memory alone, than it was trying to watch where his feet and hands were. He could also imagine it was only a few feet to solid ground instead of a sheer drop who really knew how far.</p><p>‘What floor?’ came the question from above.</p><p>He'd been checking them intermittently, his phone tucked carefully into his outward facing breast pocket, so that he could turn it on easily without having to actually hold it, or worse, risk dropping it. With each pause, he watched the battery drop a little further. Not yet, please, he begged, switching it on again, and angling his body slightly to inspect the large block lettering that read B3. ‘Next one down!’ he called back. ‘Almost there.’</p><p>He continued down a few more steps, fumbling in the darkness until his fingertips brushed the cool metal of the outer lift door. Wrapping his right arm around the upright ladder bar, holding it more by the crook of his elbow than anything else, he stretched out to try and prise it open. His fingers found the seam between the two and began working their way in between, forcing them apart. It loosened much more easily than the last one, and as the dim light from the other side began to stream in, he saw the reason why. Above him Yvonne was also outstretched, pulling at the edge. The assistance caught him by surprise.</p><p>‘Teamwork, huh?’ he asked.</p><p>‘My legs feel like jelly, my feet are killing me and I just want to get the bloody hell out of this place.’</p><p>Once he had it pulled far enough, he stepped across, his foot finding the opening, wrapping a hand around the door and pulling himself inside, before helping Yvonne do the same.</p><p>‘I need a G and T and a shiatsu massage,’ she complained, rubbing her calf.</p><p>‘I doubt I could even offer you a glass of water and a chair,’ he replied. ‘But if we had a coffee machine, well, I don't like to boast, but I do make a really good coffee. You see the key to a good coffee is-’</p><p>‘Oh, would you shut up!’</p>
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<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Chapter 23</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even in the darkness, Ianto could picture the layout of Basement Four from his memories alone. It wasn't like the modern hallways with their pristine white walls and glass partitions that featured everywhere else. It was one big expanse, pretty much just a giant warehouse with roofs that sat a lot higher. He'd suspected that it was actually two floors with the middle stripped out, making it a much bigger space. The floor was polished concrete, the walls unpainted. Marker lines in bright yellow had been painted on the floor to direct heavy machinery around the semi-organised piles of artifacts, boxes, crates and infinite rows of shelves that reached almost all the way to the roof.</p><p>Ianto always thought it resembled one of those antiques warehouses you saw in shows like Bargain Hunt. In fact, there was a great deal of Victorian style furniture piled high in one spot, including a very lifelike brown bear stood on its hind legs. One of the technicians that had brought him down here that first time had delighted in greeting it with all kinds of colourful insults, as well as getting much closer and doing something to it which Ianto was pretty sure had been clearly outlined in their sexual harassment policy as an offence subject to immediate termination of employment. Not to mention that David Attenborough would have been appalled.</p><p>‘It's everything from Torchwood House,’ Yvonne stated. ‘Well, everything worth keeping, in any case, and then some. Junk mostly. I'd forgotten how much of it there was.’</p><p>‘Why not keep it where it was if it's junk?’</p><p>‘Torchwood House was the official archive for everything once upon a time when we had an archivist who knew what he was doing. These days he's quite well past it. Lost his mind entirely if you ask me. God only knows what he might do if we left him alone up there with all this. I doubt there's much here of any use, but at least it's safe and secure, and close at hand should we ever need it. No one wants to be traipsing all the way to Scotland.’</p><p>It was quite remarkable, really, Ianto thought, moving around the makeshift pathways created by the arrangement of artifacts and high metal shelving. He'd never really taken the time to just wander around, taking it all in. He'd always been focused on the task set for him, getting what he needed and getting out. For someone to take charge of it all and put it into some semblance of order would be a huge undertaking in his opinion.</p><p>On account of the vintage of almost everything down here, it had been largely untouched by the swarm. Though they'd developed a taste for flesh, items made of wood, paper, brass, ceramic and stone still seemed impervious.</p><p>‘You're sure you know where you're going?’ Yvonne asked, following Ianto as he navigated between the shelves.</p><p>‘Records are all the way down the back,’ he assured her. His focus however was on his phone, scanning for any indication of green. He didn't want to work on the assumption that they might not change their mind about the menu on offer down here when they ran out of everything else. Whether it was just one giant swarm now, prowling around, or several smaller ones, they had no idea. There was really no telling just how much it had managed to replicate itself.</p><p>He rounded a corner and came to stand in front of the large vault. Four walls of solid concrete rose up all the way to the ceiling, with only a small square opening, no bigger than a double door. Unpocketing his access card, he swiped the security panel and entered the ten digit code require to activate the airlock. He cast a glance back at her. ‘Have you been in here before?’  </p><p>‘Do I look like I care for dusty old files?’</p><p>‘Fair warning, then. The air is a little on the thin side. To preserve the documents,’ he clarified.</p><p>‘Sounds very da Vinci Code,’ she mused.</p><p>‘In a lot of ways I suppose it is,’ he replied. Except for the getting locked in, running out of air and nearly dying parts, he hoped. He only wished he'd seen the movie before his first trip down here. Had he done so, he might have been better prepared. Or at least someone might have had the courtesy to give him the warning advice he'd just shared.</p><p>The first time he'd been in there he'd panicked, thinking they'd sealed him inside with no air. Technicians were a weird lot, he'd been warned, and liked to pull pranks on unsuspecting colleagues from other departments. The panicking hadn't helped his situation, and his boss had given him a right rollicking when word had filtered back that he'd been seen banging his fists on the doors demanding to be let out, nearly passing out in the process. ‘Don't be so fucking stupid, Jones. D'you really think I'd send you somewhere you couldn't breathe? It's to preserve the documents, you idiot!’ He suspected it was those same technicians who'd spread the rumours in the first place, getting a secondary kick of amusement from the whole thing. At least Tony had been sympathetic. ‘Fucking wankers,’ he'd said.</p><p>Yvonne appeared nonplussed. ‘I've trekked through the Andes. I'll be fine.’</p><p>‘You've trekked?’ Picturing her in khaki shorts and hiking boots seemed ludicrous.</p><p>‘Don't sound so surprised. There's a lot you don't know about me, Ianto Jones.’</p><p>The inner door hissed open. Ianto, now something of an old hand down here, took his first long, slow breath, letting it fill his lungs with as much oxygen as he could, before slowly breathing it back out. For the first time all night, he finally felt safe.</p><p>‘And we have light,’ Yvonne mused, as they were bathed in a cool red glow.</p><p>‘Not connected to mains power,’ Ianto replied. ‘Wouldn't be much good if it was. It's purpose is to protect everything inside around the clock, regardless. Light is kept at a minimum.’</p><p>Ianto stepped over to the desk where the clunky desktop computer sat, booting it up. He didn't think he'd ever so been so happy to see the glow of that T logo.</p><p>‘Torchwood's servers are located all across the globe,’ Yvonne said, sliding into the chair next to him. ‘We should have access to every database and every system.’</p><p>Ianto stilled his hand over the mouse, a pensive look crossing his features. ‘Yeah, but what do we do now that we're here? Skype for help?’</p><p>‘I can issue a communique to the phone of every essential Torchwood staff, briefing them on the situation. They can be mobilised in less than twenty minutes.’</p><p>‘But still locked out.’</p><p>She dragged the keyboard across the desk so that it was in front of her and logged in, using her credentials. ‘I need to upload the data from your phone so that Raj and his team can review it immediately and start working on solutions.’</p><p>Ianto extracted the phone from his pocket with a guilty look. ‘Er, slight problem with that plan,’ he said. The screen was blank, the battery completely dead.</p><p>‘We need that data, Ianto.’</p><p>‘Sure. I'll just ask it nicely if it wouldn't mind turning itself back on, shall I? If only there was somewhere we could plug this in and charge it up. Unfortunately, there's nothing down here dated beyond about 1958.’ Even the computer looked like a clunky model from the nineties, all boxy and in that ever popular shade of off-white plastic. It still had a space for inserting three and a half inch floppy disks. All they needed was a dot matrix printer to complete the look.</p><p>Yvonne slammed the desk with her hand. ‘Charge it up. Ianto that's it!’</p><p>He frowned. ‘That's what?’ He was sure he hadn't said anything that was going to revolutionise the world, let alone save their bacon.</p><p>‘The building is locked down, but the Presidium, or whatever it is, can still get out once it finds the internal plumbing. Once it gets into the main sewerage system…’</p><p>‘It's night night, nurse,’ Ianto finished.</p><p>‘So, we need something better than a lockdown.’</p><p>He was afraid she was about to utter the words “Phase Three”. After everything they'd survived and now they were still going to die. If there was such a thing as reincarnation, he was going to make sure that he clocked off at five PM every day without fail. No more late nights, no more overtime, and no more trying to be helpful. Good karma was a load of bollocks. ‘I'd say it's been nice knowing you, but, to be fair, it hasn't exactly been a picnic,’ he confessed.</p><p>‘Stop looking so gloomy. You'd think the world was about to end.’</p><p>He quirked an eyebrow at her in surprise. ‘It isn't?’</p><p>‘Do you remember how we managed to originally contain the Presidium down in the silo?’</p><p>‘An electrical field?’</p><p>‘Exactly.’</p><p>‘But you said that took an enormous amount of power just to keep that little sample contained.’</p><p>‘So we just need a bit of extra juice to widen the field and keep it locked inside Torchwood.’</p><p>Ianto tried to do the math in his head. Though he wasn't sure just how much power that was, he assumed it was well more than they had. ‘You want power when we don't have any. The entire country is suffering a shortage, or have you not noticed all the brownouts? My flat hasn't had proper heating for a week. I ate a half frozen lasagne one night because the microwave conked out.’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘Never doing that again, by the way.’</p><p>‘A shortage of power, but not a complete lack,’ Yvonne corrected him. ‘And it's done us a favour by chewing through the insulation on all the wiring inside Torchwood Tower. We're literally sitting on top of a building that has exposed electrical wires everywhere. They're pressed up against support beams, metal joinery, on every floor and in every wall. The building has just become one giant metal superconductor.</p><p>‘Like a big metal cage?’</p><p>‘We're going to use every last bit of electrical power to charge it up and contain them. The electromagnetic field will of course fry any piece of working equipment within about a hundred metres, but what's that compared to the alternative?’</p><p>Ianto pondered the plan, trying to find the flaw. ‘But what about the hospitals and such that need power? We can't just steal the entire city's power.’</p><p>‘Not just the city, Ianto.’ He reyes were glinting with excitement. ‘We're taking the entire UK offline.’</p><p>‘But-’</p><p>‘Ianto, stop and think about it. There won't be any need for hospitals if this stuff gets out. They'll have backup generators for critical systems. Oh, where is that sodding Doctor now when everything is going tits up? Hmm?’</p><p>‘I thought you said-’</p><p>She bit her lip. ‘Never mind what I said earlier. So maybe Torchwood didn't fix everything that happened, and maybe we had more than a little assistance from the Doctor, but we sure as hell blew that Sycorax spaceship out of the sky.’ She still beamed with pride at the phone call from the Prime Minister, authorising the use of deadly force. Finally a chance to show that Torchwood meant business and it had the necessary power to give those aliens what for. ‘I thought he'd show tonight and I was wrong. The world could be about to end, but we're going to stop it, because we're Torchwood and that's what we do.’</p><p>They had a plan. Crazy, dangerous and a little bit mad, but perhaps, just perhaps, it could work. ‘And what about us? How do we get out if we manage to trap it in here?’ He assumed she was about to begin posturing about Queen and country, and that their lives would be a small price to pay.</p><p>‘It's an electromagnetic field. We can walk straight through it, but the Presidium will be contained. Just don't touch anything metallic, unless of course you want to electrocute yourself.’</p><p>‘And the lockdown?’</p><p>‘It will deactivate as soon as it detects the threat has been contained.’</p><p>‘So, that's it? We just walk right out, like nothing is wrong.’</p><p>‘And call in the technical team to begin the process of reducing the size of the field, shrinking the available space for the Presidium to exist inside, closing the net, before finally encasing it.’</p><p>Ianto considered the simplicity of the plan and began laughing.</p><p>Yvonne furrowed her brow at him, concerned that he'd finally cracked. ‘What are you laughing about?’</p><p>‘My family think I'm a public servant. They're going to ask me what I do all day whilst they're tucking into their turkey and gravy tomorrow. I was going to tell them it was really boring and that nothing exciting ever happened. And here I am standing in a building full of crazy alien stuff, helping to save the world by turning the building into a giant tesla coil. No, not a coil, a tree! A giant bloody lit up Christmas tree!’ He laughed again, dissolving into a fit of uncontrolled giggling, unsure he wasn't having a mental breakdown.</p><p>‘You think that's funny?’ Yvonne countered. ‘I'm not even wearing any shoes.’</p>
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<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Chapter 24</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ianto eventually managed to contain his hysteria, turning back to the matter at hand. God, but Lisa was never going to believe him when he told her what had happened. If this didn't impress her and convince her to go out on a date with him, nothing would. ‘Shit's about to get real, Tony,’ he felt like saying.</p><p>He watched Yvonne intently as she worked at the computer, feeling a growing sense of impatience and unease. ‘Are you sure you know what you're doing?’</p><p>Yvonne batted Ianto's hand away from the keyboard. ‘Stop it. I'm trying to hack the UK power grid to divert the power. It's not just a matter of flicking a switch.’</p><p>‘British Energy, Ovo, EDF, Green Energy, Atlantic, New Power, Scottish Power, Swalec…’</p><p>Yvonne emitted a short little huff, her fingers pausing over the keys. ‘What are you doing?’</p><p>‘Listing off all the power companies in Britain so you don't miss any.’</p><p>Yvonne groaned. ‘You really need a life.’</p><p>‘Says the woman who was sitting in her office alone on Christmas Eve. At least I had plans.’</p><p>‘Touché. Besides, I'm not bothering with the electricity wholesalers, I'm going straight to the source. The National Grid Control Centre. They control the distribution of all power generated in the UK.’ She gave him a pleased little smirk. ‘If you thought the London blackout of 2003 was bad, you haven't seen anything yet.’</p><p>She worked deftly at the keyboard, popping up screen after screen of complex schematics and graphs which he assumed were maps for the conduit of power across the country. They looked more like a confused London Tube map full of squiggly coloured lines. They were doing this, he thought. Really doing this. They were going to blackout the entire country.</p><p>He thought of his mum, tucked up in bed already, having turned in for the night just as soon as the BBC Christmas Carols were finished. Somewhere else, his sister would be fumbling around in the dark trying to put presents under the tree for his niece and nephew. His brother in law, Johnny, would be trying to help, cursing quietly every time he tripped over the furniture in the living room in what was a permanent state of chaos. Neither of them would probably even notice if the power went out.</p><p>He thought of Soren at the pub, thinking he'd been stood up, hanging out with all Ianto's mates from work, and probably chatting up Lisa, even though he probably knew Ianto had a crush on her, and that rules dictated that you didn't try and steal another bloke’s girl, even if they hadn't made it to a first date yet. Ianto prayed that when the power went out, Soren didn't offer for them to go back to his.</p><p>More likely Lisa was chatting up Soren. She didn't know about the rule. She probably didn't even know he fancied her. Did girls have a similar rule when they liked guys? None of the other girls at work showed any interest in him. Maybe that was why. It was a nice thought.</p><p>‘We're ready,’ Yvonne announced, pulling him from his introspection.</p><p>‘I really hope this works,’ he said, gripping the back of her chair.</p><p>‘Well, if it doesn't, we'll probably just overload every electrical circuit in the building and set it on fire.’</p><p>Ianto cringed. ‘Thanks for telling me that. So, how did you spend your Christmas this year? Oh, well, I just helped to try and save the world and instead got burned alive in the towering inferno of death. You?’</p><p>Yvonne didn't let herself be drawn into his banter, instead pressing the key that would either save the world or destroy it.</p><p>There was a fizz, a snap and a crackle, so loud that even inside the vault it felt deafening. They ran to the glass doors and peered through them. The light fixtures overhead exploded in a shower of white sparks, unable to withstand the sheer voltage being forced through their fluorescent chemical insides. Yvonne hurried back to the computer, desperate for  more tangible proof. On the computer screen, a graph showing output of electrical power to cities around London plummeted as the one for the London metro area soared, threatening to explode completely off the scale of the Y-axis. ‘Power is diverting! Lockdown protocols are going offline.’</p><p>Ianto moved across to the vault doors, releasing himself from the restrictive space. The tang of electricity could be felt in the air, making the tiny hairs on his arms stand to attention under his shirt sleeves, and a loud thrumming reverberated around the walls. If it didn't shake apart first, it might just hold. His watch, a cheap digital one he'd picked up at a shonky little shop in Haymarket, beeped in an annoyed fashion before conking out altogether. The electromagnetic field was far more than it could cope with.</p><p>‘I've managed to stabilise the field,’ Yvonne announced, walking up towards him. ‘Four thousand gigawatts ought to be enough for now. First response teams are on their way here. I think they got the message. If not, the sudden blackout ought to get them here quick smart.’</p><p>‘That's it?’</p><p>‘That's it,’ she confirmed. ‘Congratulations, you've just earned yourself and your colleagues an extra-long Christmas break. This will takes days to contain. Raj will lose his mind.’</p><p>It was only now that she looked down to see what Ianto was holding. She stared incredulously at the old fashioned hockey stick clutched in his hands. How he'd uncovered it amongst the piles of rubbish in the darkness was beyond her. ‘What on earth are you planning on doing with that?’</p><p>Ianto gave a patronising little smirk, walking away and forcing her to follow him. Eventually they reached the far wall and the door that lead to the emergency stairwell. ‘Allow me to get the door for you, ma'am,’ he replied, hooking the end around the long horizontal metal handle, jerking it backwards. ‘Mind the railings. I understand they're a little on the sharp side.’</p><p>Yvonne gave him a considered look. ‘Your newfound resourcefulness is rather scary,’ she commented, pressing herself against the wall as far from the metal banisters as possible.</p><p>He unhooked the handle and slipped inside, keeping a grip on the hockey stick and feeling rather pleased with himself. He'd expected he might find a walking cane in amongst the Victorian age detritus, but when he'd uncovered the piece of sporting equipment, he'd settled on that instead. Any port in a storm, as they said. It was a low tech solution but it did the job. ‘I work with what I'm given.’</p><p>They carefully padded up the four floors to the ground level. The hope was that wherever the swarm was, it had been stunned into staying put. Now would have been a terrible time for everything to come undone. Ianto was about to tug open the door when Yvonne brushed past him, continuing up another flight.</p><p>‘Uh…’</p><p>‘Just wait here a minute,’ she replied. ‘And give me that stick.’</p><p>‘No chance,’ he said, jogging up the stairs to keep pace. They'd come this far together.</p><p>‘Open this one,’ she said, indicating Level One.</p><p>‘But, aren't you worried about… you know…’</p><p>‘Flesh eating aliens? Of course, but what they haven't eaten down here probably isn't worth knowing about. Come on. It's just for a few minutes.’</p><p>Reluctantly, he prised the door open, thinking about just how close they'd been to escape. Why she wanted to go here was anyone's guess. It was just plain old office cubicles for the general support staff like himself.</p><p>‘Where are you?’ he let the question drift off as she began wandering around the cubicles, hurriedly checking filing cabinet drawers for God only knew what reason. Finally he heard he exclaim, ‘Oh, yes, you'll do nicely.’</p><p>She was back a second later, a fresh pair of pump heels in her hand, bending one leg back and slipping on the first nude coloured stiletto, before repeating the action one-legged to slide on the other shoe. He gave her a bemused expression that suggested how women did that was beyond his comprehension.</p><p>‘A girl always keeps a spare pair of shoes in her drawer,’ she said. ‘You never know when you might need them.’</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Chapter 25</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For all her cool, collected demeanor, Yvonne couldn't wait to get out. She listened to the sharp click of her newly acquired heels across the marble floors that stretched the entire length of the entrance to her little fiefdom. It would have been undignified to walk any quicker than she already was. All she really needed was a fresh coat of lipstick. Going in search of one in the right shade however had felt a step too selfish.</p><p>She could make out the flash of lights and the heavy armored vehicles already clamoring for space outside the building's entrance and it made her beam with unrepentant pride. Her people. Come hell or high water, or even Christmas Eve, they were here, ready to serve their Queen.</p><p>She stood back for a moment, letting her young assistant poke at the revolving doors with his makeshift equipment, and letting the little flutter in her stomach settle as the doors slowly but surely began to turn. Never had the bracing London chill felt so wonderful.</p><p>Like a glut of paparazzi, she soon found herself surrounded, basking in the glow of their attention. Was she alright? What had happened? What could or should they do to assist? With a wave of her hand, she dismissed them temporarily, like a Prime Minister leaving a press conference, making a beeline for the one person she knew she could trust to take care of the situation.</p><p>‘Ms Hartman, I can't tell you how relieved we are to see you.’ Doctor Singh reached out a hand and shook her own.</p><p>‘I would have called you sooner, Raj,’ she replied, ‘but we had to operate on the fly.’</p><p>Rajesh Singh took a moment to appraise the young man standing just behind her, frowning at the hockey stick clutched in his hands. ‘Who's he?’ The way he said it made clear his disdain.</p><p>‘Ianto Jones,’ Yvonne replied. ‘He was occasionally helpful.’</p><p>Ianto gave a small, courteous smile, whipping the hockey stick behind his back to hide it from view. Yvonne turned her gaze towards him. ‘Phone,’ she said, holding out her hand.</p><p>‘But it's-’</p><p>‘Phone,’ she insisted, cutting off his argument, and giving him a little satisfied smile as he handed it over. She held it out for Doctor Singh.</p><p>‘All the data you need should be on there. Get it on charge and start analysing it right away. I want this building back up and running as soon as possible. And for God's sake, whatever you do, do not shut off the power.’  </p><p>Rajesh nodded. ‘Right away, ma'am.’</p><p>‘But that's my phone,’ Ianto said, looking despondent.</p><p>Yvonne gave a tired sigh. ‘Fine. Give him the sim card. Everything else is saved to the memory.’</p><p>Rajesh clipped off the back cover, extracting the card and handing it back. Judging by the expression on Ianto's face as he pocketed the tiny chip, it was considered a poor consolation. Rajesh gave Yvonne another nod and walked away, ordering several rather bookish looking people in corduroy trousers and knitted jumpers to follow him to a van.</p><p>‘Well,’ Yvonne said, throwing back her hair from her face. ‘I'd say that's sorted for now.’</p><p>‘And no Doctor,’ Ianto added.</p><p>She shrugged. ‘Can't win them all, I suppose. God I need a drink.’ She turned to him and frowned. ‘Didn't you say you were meeting some friends after work at a bar?’</p><p>‘I don't think anywhere we'd hang out would be quite up to your standards.’</p><p>‘No, quite right,’ she nodded. ‘Come along, then.’</p><p>‘Where are we going?’</p><p>She gave him a curious look. ‘I thought that was obvious. If you tell me you don't drink, I'll be most disappointed.’</p><p>‘We're leaving?’</p><p>‘The team have it all well in hand. That's the job of any good leader, to be able to delegate.’</p><p>‘So, you're coming to drink at the pub with the little people?’</p><p>She gave a little laugh. ‘Of course not. But I do know somewhere that would suit our purpose.’</p><p>‘Oh. Okay.’</p><p>‘And Ianto?’</p><p>‘Hmm?’</p><p>She cast a disparaging look down at him. ‘Probably best you leave the stick behind.’</p><p>A little smile of victory crept over her face as she heard his footsteps fall into line behind her. God she loved this job.</p>
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<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Chapter 26</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The bar Yvonne chose was posh and exclusive, with thick leather upholstery, mahogany wood fittings and frosted glass. A smooth but unobtrusive jazz sound filtered around the room, giving it a Christmas twist.</p><p>She settled herself in one of the high-backed leather armchairs that sat neatly in pairs around small cherry coloured tables. No sooner had she done so than a sharply dressed waiter arrived by her side. ‘Dry martini,’ Yvonne ordered. ‘What about you, Mr Jones?’</p><p>He sat tentatively down in the chair opposite. ‘Er, scotch.’</p><p>‘Make it a double. Blue label, please.’ Yvonne gave him an eye when Ianto frowned at her. ‘What? I think you've earned it. Though you're a little worse for wear,’ she added, appraising his suit which was now a tad on the haggard side.</p><p>‘Do you mind if I go to the bathroom, then?’</p><p>‘That's an excellent idea.’ If nothing else, a damp towel might take the dried, salty sheen of sweat from his face and neck, she thought, not to mention removing a few darker oil coloured stains and the layer of dust accumulated on the knees and elbows of his suit. She eyed the black spot on the shoulder of her own cream jacket, slipping it off and folding it neatly in her lap, hiding the stain. That was better. ‘Don't rush back,’ she insisted.</p><p>Yvonne smiled to herself as she watched him walk away. ‘Hook, line and sinker,’ she muttered to herself, slipping the small plastic bag from her jacket pocket extracting one tiny white pill and slipping it into Ianto's glass as it arrived promptly on a tray with her own. She gave the glass a little swirl, the powder dissolving in an instant.</p><p>Yvonne crossed a leg and slowly sipped at her drink. What a night, she thought. When she got home there was a long, hot bath with her name written all over it.</p><p>Ianto returned and slipped into the luxurious chair, taking a grateful gulp of scotch. ‘Can't believe this place is still open,’ he said. ‘You know, city wide blackout and all.’ Somewhere in the distance he could discern the gentle hum of a backup generator, keeping the place going as if the outside world didn't exist.</p><p>Yvonne twirled the olive in her drink. ‘This place never closes.’ Unlike the bars Ianto likely frequented, there was no need to toss the rabble out at four in the morning so that they had time to mop up the spilled drinks, broken glass and vomit. Establishments like this were member only, and Yvonne was a platinum grade guest.</p><p>Ianto sighed and looked around the bar, slowly raising the glass to his lips once more. ‘Hard to believe none of them know what happened tonight.’</p><p>Yvonne shrugged. ‘Do you think it would make them feel better?’</p><p>‘Probably not.’ She could tell from the thoughtful expression on his face that he was finally beginning to understand. It wasn't about the Official Secrets Act, this was about doing what they did for the good of mankind. For the Empire.</p><p>‘Hard to believe in just a few hours I'll be on a train back to Cardiff.’</p><p>Yvonne considered him over the edge of her glass. ‘You'd still rather face aliens than your family?’</p><p>‘It's a fifty-fifty,’ he said, giving a small chuckle. He set his glass down on the table and leaned back. ‘You know something else? Everyone says you're just some unsympathetic, power hungry boss, and that you don't really care.’</p><p>She flashed him her best nonchalant smile. ‘Do they now?’</p><p>‘But… well, that's not true. You obviously care about Torchwood a great deal, and you're not quite as inhuman as everybody says. You did save my life, after all.’</p><p>‘If you're buttering me up for a promotion,’ she warned.</p><p>Ianto smiled. ‘Oh, no. Tonight has been quite enough adventure for me. I'll be glad to go back to my old job, boring as it might be. No one's ever been killed by a rogue spreadsheet.’</p><p>‘Perhaps that recruitment software got it wrong,’ Yvonne mused. ‘Perhaps it earmarked you for something other than your spreadsheeting skills. I can always use someone with a sharp mind and a bit of ambition.’</p><p>Ianto retrieved his glass and swallowed down the remaining scotch, enjoying the warm comforting burn. ‘I'll think about it, but no promises.’ A yawn escaped him. ‘For now, I'll just be glad for a few hours sleep, and probably a few more on the train back to Wales.’</p><p>‘I'll call us a cab,’ Yvonne offered, tipping back the remains of her martini.</p><p>The black cab arrived in short order outside the bar and they clambered in. Yvonne gave an address a good twenty minutes away, but within ten minutes her passenger was fast asleep against the side of the door.</p><p>‘Change of plans. Paddington Station, if you please,’ Yvonne asked the driver, diverting them back. ‘I'll pay you triple if you carry him all the way down to the platform.’</p><p>‘He got an oyster card?’ the cabbie asked, as if nothing at all was unusual about the request.</p><p>Yvonne rifled Ianto's pockets unashamedly, extracting the card from his wallet and holding it up to the rear vision mirror for the cabbie to see. He just shrugged. Yvonne got the impression that it wouldn't be the first time he'd had to help carry a drunken passenger out of his vehicle. ‘Won't be any trains until the morning,’ the cabbie said, ‘assuming they get the city's power back online. Big stink up.’</p><p>‘I'm sure they'll have made arrangements by then,’ Yvonne replied smoothly. ‘We Londoners always find a way to carry on.’</p><p>‘He'll have a sore head in the morning,’ the cabbie muttered. ‘Bloody Christmas day and all.’</p><p>‘A pity he won't remember any of it,’ was all Yvonne said in reply.</p><p>A few minutes later, the cab was pulled up outside the station, the burly cab driver, a Pakistani man by descent, lugged the passed out passenger across the pavement and all the way into the station. Yvonne watched quietly from the back of the cab, not offering even the slightest bit of assistance.</p><p>‘Safe journey back to Cardiff, Mr Jones.’</p>
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